
Class. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



HOW TO WRITE 
POETRY 



ijxito to Write fawrg 



BY 

ETHEL M. COLSON 

Author of "How to Read Poetry," etc. 



THE GOSPEL OF ART 

Work thou for pleasure; paint or sing or carve 
The thihg thou lowest, though the body starve. 
Who 'works for glory misses oft the goal; 
Who njoor^s for money coins his very soul; 
Work for the work's sake, then, and it may be 
That these things shall be added unto thee. 

— Kenyon Cox 




CHICAGO 

A. C. McCLURG & CO. 

1919 






Copyright 

A. C. McClurg & Co. 

1919 



Published December, 1919 



>M 



s im 



W. F. HALL PRINTING COMPANY, CHICAGO 



)GI.A56JL350 



Ea 



ffl$ hmx i^nsbmb 



The surest path to experience (of delight 
in poetry), lies not through reading, but 
through making it. Better than faith or cher- 
ished idleness, better even than the under- 
standing of poetry as a way to learn the en- 
joyment of it — and that without alienation 
from the better poem of one's own existence 
— is to create it for one's self. 

— Max Eastman 



VI 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



For permission to reprint, wholly or in 
part, the poems quoted in this volume grate- 
ful acknowledgments are hereby tendered 
the following publishers and poets : 

Duffield & Company: "The Gospel of Art" from Old 
Masters and New by Kenyon Cox, and " Window-Wish- 
ing " from Flashlights by Mary Aldis. 

Edith M. Thomas: "The Muses." 

Henry Holt and Company: "Off the Ground" from 
Peacock Pie by Walter de la Mare. 

John Lane Company: "Song" from the Collected 
Poems of Rupert Brooke. 

The Century Company: "To a Firefly by the Sea" 
from Wraiths and Realities by Cale Young Rice, and 
" Caliban in the Coal Mines " from Challenge by Louis 
Untermeyer. 

Dorothy Keeley: "A Pleasant Thought." 

William Heinemann, London: "A Ballad of Dream- 
land " from Poems and Ballads, and " The Way of the 
Wind " from Studies in Song: A Century of Roundels by 
Algernon Charles Swinburne. 

Dodd, Mead & Company: "The Wanderer" and 
" Rose Kissed Me Today " by Austin Dobson. 

Lyon Mearson : " Rondeau." 

Mrs. W. F. Henley and The Incorporated Society of 
Authors, Playwrights, and Composers, London : " Vil- 
lanelle " from Poems by William Ernest Henley. 



viii Acknowledgments 



Frances Shaw: "The New World." 

Houghton Mifflin Company: "Market" from The 
Book of the Little Past by Josephine Preston Peabody, and 
"The Flower Factory " from The Ride Home by Flor- 
ence Wilkinson. 

The John C. Winston Company: "Teresina's Face" 
from The Factories with Other Lyrics by Margaret Wid- 
demer. 

D. Appleton and Company: "To a River God" from 
The Wind in the Corn and Other Poems by Edith Frank- 
lin Wyatt. 

George H. Doran Company: "Rouge Bouquet" from 
the Collected Poems by Joyce Kilmer. 



THE MUSES 



Of old the Muses sat on high, 

And heard and judged the songs of men; 
On one they smiled, who loitered by; 

Of toiling ten, they slighted ten. 

" They lightly serve who serve us best, 
Nor know they how the task was done ; 

We Muses love a soul at rest, 
But violence and toil we shun." 

If men say true, the Muses now 

Have changed their ancient habitude, 

And would be served with knitted brow, 
And stress and toil each day renewed. 

So each one with the other vies, 

Of those who weave romance or song: 

" On us, O Muse, bestow thy prize, 
For we have striven well and long! " 



The Muses 



And yet methinks I hear the hest 

Come murmuring down from Helicon: 

"They lightly serve who serve us best, 
Nor know they how the task was done ! " 
— Edith M. Thomas 



PREFACE 



This little book is offered without apology. 
No apology is needed for any effort, how- 
ever humble, attempting to further the great 
cause and art of poetry. As well attempt 
apology for seeking to augment popular ap- 
preciation of love or music or sunshine. But 
a word of explanation may not be out of 
place. 

It is not hoped by means of this modest 
bantling to increase the outward and visible 
supply of poets. Poets, whatever may have 
been said and thought to the contrary, are 
born and not made. So are musicians, 
painters, actors, artists of whatever order. 
But who, for this reason, would deny to the 
ordinary educated human some slight tech- 
nical knowledge — at least enough for in- 
telligent appreciation — of music or the 
drama or art? 






xw Preface 

Nobody not poetically gifted by God, the 
Great Poet, will be enabled to produce poetry 
— real poetry, not mere poetic craft work — > 
as a result of this or any other poetic study. 
The technique of any art is a thing far apart 
from its genius, even admitting genius to be 
largely composed of hard and devoted labor. 
But just as the profoundest genius in the 
realms of harmony or color or sculpture or 
dramatic outpouring can attain fullest self- 
expression only by means of long and arduous 
training, so the poetic genius, super-endowed 
though he may be, can but turn out better 
poems for fuller understanding of the ma- 
terial, the medium in and through which he 
works. 

Poetry alone of all the arts, has had no 
training schools, at least in modern times no 
studious, learned, and devoted professors. It 
may be that from its very nature it can have 
none. It has been tacitly held — perhaps be- 
cause a modicum of training in "higher Eng- 
lish," including some attempt at poetic 
analyzation and writing, is given in high 
schools and colleges, perhaps because the 



Preface xiii 

poetic art is so superlatively high and noble, 
so transcends all others — that the poet can 
find his own artistic way uncharted. Is it not 
reasonable to suppose, on the other hand, 
that time and effort, possibly even genius, 
t may be conserved if the poetic aspirant re- 
ceive early and proper training in the basic 
facts of his art? 

Many a would-be musical or artistic 
genius, again, through intensive training dis- 
covers his cherished gift to be but talent, and, 
while always and incalculably the richer for 
his quickened insight into the chosen field of 
artistic endeavor, by the indicated training 
is saved from bitter failure. The world is 
full of musical and artistic enjoyers, critics, 
spectators, supporters who have come up 
through the ranks of the talented, carefully 
trained aspirants after higher honors. Tech- 
nical training, in such case, has worked a 
kindly miracle both ways. 

This little book, however, while hoping to 
clear the poetic skies for some whose working 
windows may be darkened, is in no sense in- 
tended to be either exhaustive or elementary. 



xiv Preface 

It is assumed that those sufficiently interested 
in the writing of poetry to read books about 
it already are acquainted with the little that 
may be known of the laws of English prosody 
or at least know how and where to find them. 
And those who desire to follow far the keen 
study of poetic production are commended to 
such admirable works as Max Eastman's 
sympathetic treatise on The Enjoyment of 
Poetry; C. E. Andrews' enlightening and 
comprehensive volume, The Reading and 
Writing of Verse; Marguerite Wilkinson's 
The New Voices, An Introduction to Con- 
temporary Poetry; and The New Era in 
American Poetry, by Louis Untermeyer. 
Each of these books, especially, perhaps, 
that of Professor Andrews, will help the seri- 
ous, poetic student to much that he ought to 
know. 

Here, between your hands, is but a mild 
attempt to " point the way, however dimly" 
to deepened appreciation of the art as well 
as the charm of good poetry, to suggest to 
the poetry lover who fain would produce 
as well as appreciate certain main-traveled 



Preface xv 

roads leading to the poetic Elysium. The 
writer believes, with Holy Writ, that 
" Whoso doeth the deed shall know the doc- 
trine," and also believes, with the wise and 
witty J. B. Kerfoot, that "One may learn 
more about poetry from watching its squirms 
than from all the pronouncements of all the 
pundits" — and, it might be added, from all 
the pronouncements of all the poets them- 
selves. 

For this reason, if for no other, the gen- 
erous measure of interpolated poetry stands 
undefended and self-sufficient to all seekers. 
The reader of How to Write Poetry cannot 
but gain incalculably, both in pleasure and 
scholarship, by perusal of the various and 
varied illustrative examples submitted, while 
it is frankly hoped that whetting taste of 
these poetic dainties may lead to prompt fur- 
ther acquaintance with the work of the 
numerous and brilliant poets so kindly allow- 
ing their poems to be so used. 



EXCERPT FROM SOLOMON'S SONG 



My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise 
up, my love, my fair one, and come away. 

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over 
and gone ; 

The flowers appear on the earth; the time 
of the singing of birds is come, and the voice 
of the turtle is heard in our land; 

The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, 
and the vines with the tender grape give a 
good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and 
come away 

My beloved is mine, and I am his : he f eed- 
eth among the lilies. 

Until the day break, and the shadows flee 
away . • . . 



XVI 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I Why Write Poetry? 7 

II We Must Have a Skeleton .... 30 

III The Clothing Substance 53 

IV The Indwelling Spirit 78 

V The Training and Equipment of the 

Poet 102 

VI The Poet's Service 126 

VII The Conclusion of the Whole Matter . 148 

INTERPOLATED POEMS 



The Muses . . 


Edith M. Thomas . . . 


ix 


Off the Ground . 


Walter de la Mare . . 


1 


Song .... 


Rupert Brooke . . . . 


28 


To a Firefly by the Sea 






Cale Young Rice 


50 


The New World 


Frances Shaw .... 


76 


Market . . . 


Josephine Preston Peabody 


IOO 


Window- Wishing 


Mary Aldis 


121 


To a River God. 


Edith Franklin Wyatt 


144 


Rouge Bouquet . 


Joyce Kilmer . . . . 


155 



HOW TO WRITE 
POETRY 



OFF THE GROUND 

Three jolly Farmers 

Once bet a pound 

Each dance the others would 

Off the ground. 

Out of their coats 

They slipped right soon, 

And heat and nicesome, 

Put each his shoon. 

One — Two — Three ! — 

And away they go, 

Not too fast, 

And not too slow; 



How to Write Poetry 



Out from the elm-tree's 

Noonday shadow, 

Into the sun, 

And across the meadow. 

Past the schoolroom, 

With knees well bent, 

Fingers a-flicking, 

They dancing went. 

Up sides and over, 

And round and round, 

They crossed click-clacking, 

The Parish bound, 

By Tupman's meadow 

They did their mile, 

Tee-to-tum 

On a three-barred stile. 

Then straight through Whipham, 

Downhill to Week, 

Footing it lightsome, 

But not too quick, 

Up fields to Watchet, 

And on through Wye, 

Till seven fine churches 

They'd seen skip by — 

Seven fine churches, 



Off the Ground 



And five old mills, 

Farms in the valley, 

And sheep on the hills; 

Old Man's Acre 

And Dead Man's Pool 

All left behind, 

As they danced through Wool. 

And Wool gone by, 

Like tops that seem 

To spin in sleep 

They danced in dream: 

Withy — Wello ver — 

Wassop — Wo — 

Like an old clock 

Their heels did go. 

A league and a league 

And a league they went, 

And not one weary, 

And not one spent. 

And lo, and behold! 

Past Willow-cum-Leigh 

Stretched with its waters 

The great green sea. 

Says Farmer Bates, 

11 1 puffs and I blows, 



How to Write Poetry 



What's under the water, 

Why, no man knows ! " 

Says Farmer Giles, 

" My wind comes weak, 

And a good man drownded 

Is far to seek." 

But Farmer Turvey, 

On twirling toes 

Up's with his gaiters, 

And in he goes : 

Down where the mermaids 

Pluck and play 

On their twangling harps 

In a sea-green day; 

Down where the mermaids, 

Finned and fair, 

Sleek with their combs 

Their yellow hair. . . . 

Bates and Giles — 

On the shingle sat, 

Gazing at Turvey's 

Floating hat. 

But never' a ripple 

Nor bubble told 

Where he was supping 



Off the Ground 



Off plates of gold. 

Never an echo 

Rilled through the sea 

Of the feasting and dancing 

And minstrelsy. 

They called — called — called: 

Came no reply: 

Nought but the ripples' 

Sandy sigh. 

Then glum and silent 

They sat instead, 

Vacantly brooding 

On home and bed, 

Till both together 

Stood up and said: — 

" Us knows not, dreams not, 

Where you be, 

Turvey, unless 

In the deep blue sea ; 

But axcusing silver — 

And it comes most willing — 

Here's us two paying 

Our forty shilling; 

For it's sartin sure, Turvey, 

Safe and sound, 



How to Write Poetry 



You danced us square, Turvey, 
Off the ground !" 

— Walter de la Mare. 



CHAPTER I 

WHY WRITE POETRY? 

WHY write poetry? For a variety 
of reasons — always supposing, as 
steady basis, that the spirit so move you. 
From beginning to end of our informal rea- 
soning together it will be assumed that only 
on such basis will the high and pleasing task 
be essayed. 

Write poetry, first and last, because you 
enjoy doing so. Try to write poetry if you 
will for the same reason. But never, never, 
NEVER attempt the writing of poetry, for 
any possible, imaginable, hypothetical reason, 
unless you feel this impulse, urge, desire. 

Such desire, such impulse granted, write 
poetry — and " write poetry" herein and 
throughout this volume must be understood 
to include also intelligent effort to do so — 
because poetry writing is a rare, a wonderful 
art, the greatest of all arts in the opinion of 

7 



Horn to Write Poetry 



many great artists; because to express one's 
soul, however weakly, however inadequately, 
in poetry, or even in " verse and worse," as 
Lamb had it, is to be immeasurably the 
richer, happier, better. / Write poetry be- 
cause the poorest of poetry at least means 
broadened response to verbal rhyme or 
rhythm, while to increase the extant supply 
of any decent sort of rhyme or rhythm, of 
strong or beautiful or vivid or delicate word 
pictures, of imaginative fancies made con- 
crete and real through fitting language, 
means adding to the harmony, the beauty, 
the music of the world./* 

Write poetry because to write poetry will 
greatly enrich your prose writing — to say 
nothing of your prose reading. Write poetry 
because so will you learn the better to value 
and appreciate that most wonderful of sym- 
bols, the written word, and to have a nicer 
sense of its varied uses and meaning. Write 
poetry because, HAVING SOMETHING 
TO SAY, you desire to say it in most melo- 
dious or impressive manner, to endow it with 
longest possible lease of life. Write poetry 



Why Write Poetry? 



because you hope, at least, to attempt the 
creation of something that may never die. 

It's a wonderful thing to endow a phrase, 
a thought, a line, an idea with life, and your 
chance of so doing is much greater if poetry 
rather than prose be the chosen medium of 
expression. For even mediocre verse has 
better hope of being remembered by the 
casual reader than the finest prose, just as 
a strain of commonplace but pleasing melody 
is remembered by thousands whom the most 
magnificent of non-melodic harmonies might 
leave untouched. Write poetry because to 
write poetry is to reach out toward the 
greatest, most magical spirits of time and 
eternity, to establish sympathetic communica- 
. tion between the things of this and a nobler 
world. 

"What is it to be a poet?" asks Lord 
Dunsany, discoverer of poets and himself a 
delicate dealer in the narrbwly allied soul- 
products of poetry and drama. " It is to 
see at a glance the glory of the world, to 
see beauty in all its forms and manifestations, 
to feel ugliness like a pain, to resent the 



io How to Write Poetry 

wrongs of others as bitterly as one does one's 
own, to know mankind as others know single 
men, to know Nature as botanists know a 
flower, to be thought a fool, to hear at mo- 
ments the clear voice of God." 

"The poets are never wrong," says 
Dunsany again, in slightly different vein and 
paraphrasing James Huneker's quaint con- 
tention that because Debussy's vision was au- 
thentic, because "he knew that the core of 
reality is poetry," Debussy was a poet. " For 
of all material for labor, dreams are the 
hardest, and the artificer is the chief of 
workers, who out of nothing will make a 
piece of work that may stop a child from 
crying or lead nations to higher things." 

Lieutenant Robert Nichols, brave soldier 
and poet, means much the same as Huneker 
and Dunsany when he urges his hearers to 
"Write what you think, if you would be a 
poet, and pay no attention to anyone else." 
To write poetry inspires the writer toward 
the spiritual courage and sensitive response 
and uplifting that, in turn, inspire men and 
women and children toward humanity's 



Why Write Poetry? n 

highest enthusiasms and aspirations and 
places just as to read poetry inspires the 
reader. Because "love grows by what it 
feeds on/' to write poetry most splendidly 
increases, fosters, develops one of human- 
ity's most sublime and splendid opportunities 
and loves. 

Not to know, to love poetry, to "hate 
poetry" as many men and women, even 
book-loving men and women, believe that 
they do, is to be robbed and shorn of many 
dear and delicate, and brave and bright, 
and robust and regal pleasures. To "hate 
poetry," again in the opinion of Dunsany, 
tenderest, truest of poet-creators of fairies 
and fantasies and jade gods that come alive, 
is indeed to be unhappy and forlorn. 

" It is to have no little dreams and fancies, 
no holy memories of golden days, to be un- 
moved by serene midsummer evenings or 
dawn over wild lands, singing or sunshine, 
little tales told by the fire a long time since, 
glowworms and brier rose; for of all these 
things and more is poetry made. It is to be 
cut off forever from the fellowship of great 



i2 How to Write Poetry 

men who are gone ; to see men without their 
haloes and the world without its glory; to 
miss the meaning lurking behind common 
things, and elves hiding in flowers; it is to 
beat one's hands all day against the gates 
of fairyland and to find that they are shut 
and the country empty and the kings gone 
hence." 

To love poetry, conversely, is to be made 
free of all the suggested sweets and splen- 
dors, not to say of many fine, high, and allur- 
ing secrets of the human heart. It is to be 
in tune with humanity's best and dearest and 
noblest glories, dreams, hopes, aspirations, 
impulsions, and ardors. To write poetry — 
aye, even to write verse in the poetic spirit 
— is to have part and share in the creation 
of all these lavish hopes and ideals and won- 
ders, to have new and keener perception and 
appreciation of all that is good and true and 
tender in our brother man. 

To write poetry in the spirit in which 
poetry should be written, not because one 
hopes to sell the article made but because 
the song insists upon being sung, nay, upon 



Why Write Poetry? 13 

singing itself over and over in the core of the 
heart, the soul's most sacred places, is to 
play with the stars and the sun and the moon 
and the winds and the rain and the rivers of 
night and darkness. It is to string dull days 
with jewels, sad nights with sunbeams, to 
know the inmost meaning of love and death 
and terror, to feel joy's pulses beating high, 
joy's tide surging strongly within the quick- 
ened spirit, to be u made one with nature," 
in a pure, glad sense with nature's God. 

Write poetry, again, because poetry writ- 
ing, composition, making is the most natural, 
universal of human arts and graces. Chil- 
dren, in some kind and degree, all are poets. 
Children, child-souls, child-races all make 
poetry, verbally in the beginning, write it 
down as soon as they are able. For children 
are too close to the beginnings of life, to 
the sources of existence to be ashamed of 
primal desires and inclinations and passions, 
and their vivid, pure-rayed natures vibrate, 
always, to the music of the spheres. 

For the adult poetry lover, the lover of 
rhyme and rhythm and verbal grace and 



H How to Write Poetry 

beauty, to follow even distantly in the foot- 
steps of the little ones is to taste of the spring 
of eternal youth at will, at pleasure. For 
this, if for no other reason, poetry writing 
should become even more general than in the 
present day and generation, when practically 
everybody seems to be trying a more or less 
'prentice hand on poetry. That the desire to 
write poetry nowadays is almost as universal 
as the desire for food and sleep and sun- 
shine and free living the briefest, most sur- 
face reflection will suffice to show. 

Men, perhaps, are a little more shy about 
public admission of poetic tendencies and 
productions than women, but at least five out 
of every ten men, tactfully interrogated, will 
admit occasional composition of " a little 
verse," and among women the verse-making 
percentage will be found much higher. A lec- 
turer on poetry not long since said something 
like this before a gathering of about one 
hundred club women, members, incidentally, 
of the philosophy and science, not the art 
and literature department of one of Amer- 
ica's largest and most flourishing and most 



Why Write Poetry? 15 

famous clubs. She was met by surprised and 
incredulous smiles. 

"Will any woman present who has never 
written poetry please raise her hand?" the 
lecturer asked, intent upon supporting the 
moot statement and increasing the available 
supply of poetry-writing statistics. 

Seven hands went up, three of them not 
too boldly. 

"Will any woman present who has never 
tried to write poetry please raise her hand? " 
the lecturer persisted. 

Only two hands were raised. 

Poetry magazines have not, so far, been 
oversuccessful, financially speaking, in Amer- 
ica, yet new magazines of such order from 
time to time essay devoted if precarious ex- 
istence. And all of them achieve a more or 
less sympathetic and spacious circle of 
readers. New poetic societies, groups, and 
gatherings continually are in process of for- 
mation, which evidences indubitable popular 
interest in poetry. In schools, colleges, uni- 
versities, poetry now is studied — not "dis- 
sected and vivisected " as a poetic enthusiast 



16 How to Write Poetry 

once indignantly protested — with a fresh 
and eager interest seldom if ever manifest 
before. 

Balancing such facts with the lame and 
halting nature of many of the poetic effusions 
produced and even published, there would 
seem to be fair field for a modest little trea- 
tise on How to Write Poetry, even though 
this same modest little treatise now and 
again may seem to partake of the nature of 
Punch's notorious matrimonial advice and 
injunction. For the quality of the ever 
widening flood of poetic endeavor surely 
might be improved by the timely taking of 
thought. 

He who by smallest, most infinitesimal jot 
or tittle exalts the quality of the world's art 
is a true humanitarian and deserves passing 
well of his fellows. Write poetry, therefore, 
advancing superlative, altruistic reason, for 
sake of augmenting humanity's happy need 
of linguistic felicity and loveliness; to show 
the world, if you will, how the thing should 
be done, how it might be done if every sweet 
singer lived, always, up to highest standard. 



Why Write Poetry? 17 

But don't write poetry with the idea of 
founding a new school, a new system. 
There's no novelty in that sort of thing since 
" new " poets and poetic cults have become so 
numerous, and, really, the old schools and 
systems will last some time longer. Let 
them die, if they must, of euthanasia rather 
than untimely choking. Despite the impa- 
tient proclamations and inflammations and 
defamations of the ultra-modern poetizers, 
the old modes and manners have good wear 
in them yet. 

And don't, necessarily, write poetry for 
publication. Why should you? Publish if 
you will and can, but don't write with one eye 
on your pocketbook and the other on a pos- 
sible public. Good poetry, of course, should 
be sold and sold high. Poets live not by 
praise alone and the laborer is worthy of his 
hire. But don't think no poetry is good un- 
less you can sell it, nor that, on the other 
hand, poetry becomes good so soon as it 
brings back money. Logically, actually, 
there's no connection between the two phe- 
nomena. Witness your own oft-repeated 



How to Write Poetry 



complaint concerning "What poor stuff one 
finds in the magazines, nowadays!" and the 
historic knowledge that the world's greatest 
poets frequently have not been able to sell 
their poetry at all. 

Moreover, it will be remembered, in such 
regard, that at least until the present era, 
few poets have been business successes, have 
attempted to live by their singing. And even 
the most popular of our contemporary min- 
strels help to keep the pot boiling by virtue 
of some other, more strictly utilitarian trade 
or profession. The majority of them are 
like the wise Chicago sculptress who taught 
dancing rather than dim the freshness of her 
artistic ability by too frequent bread and 
butter figurines and statues. Many members 
of the modern choir immortal preserve and 
observe traditional practice if not preaching 
by singing for the song's sake mainly — and 
selling their songs when they can. 

(At this juncture the reader is exhorted 
to peruse anew the Kenyon Cox poem-creed 
on the title page of this study, with the Max 
Eastman quotation that follows. Nothing 



Why Write Poetry? 19 

could better express the spirit in which the 
writing of poetry, as any other form of 
artistic endeavor, should be undertaken, 
carried on.) 

The Japanese, perhaps, have the best idea 
in regard to poetry writing, the making of 
poems. Certainly the Japanese idea, despite 
the studied care of its later practice, most 
nearly approaches the unstudied yet exquisite 
singing of those early poets of all races who 
sang as naturally as they spoke or leaped or 
ran or exercised any other of nature's unend- 
ing possibilities of joyous expression; who 
felt not that singing, poetry making, was a 
special pleasure reserved for the few — 
though always the professional singer, the 
minstrel, the troubadour displayed it most 
fully, having proved his right to special poetic 
privilege in fair, free, and fullest public com- 
petition with his rivals — but that poetry 
making to some extent was the right and 
prerogative of all. 

The Japanese, as, in some measure, the 
Chinese also, make poems upon all possible 
subjects and occasions. They sell them com- 



2 ° How to Write Poetry 

paratively seldom, being content, in the main, 
to celebrate rather than commercialize pleas- 
ing ideas and fancies. But the educated 
Japanese or Chinese man or woman who 
could not make a poem — a real poem — 
upon instant notice would be deemed indeed 
a dull and inarticulate, not to say inartistic, 
creature. Yet the making of one of the 
quaint Japanese poems of from seventeen to' 
thirty-four syllables, a feat common to prac- 
tically all Japanese classes, is no mean trick, 
verbally speaking. The making of a Chinese 
poem, even of the odd and frequently disap- 
pointing "stop-short" variety, is a work of 
art before the mere craftsmanship of which 
the more indolent occidental would shrink 
and shudder, Chinese being a language of In- 
finite and infinitely varied sounds, inflections 
and potentialities, with a demanded nicety of 
stress, accent, rhythm, and general linguistic 
finish not to be dreamed of in regard to any 
other tongue. 

Why not write poetry, then, as do our 
oriental fellow-poets, for mere love of creat- 
ing something beautiful, of handling delicate 



Why Write Poetry? 21 

and graphic and beautiful words, of making 
fine and charming ideas fall into beautiful 
patterns, of learning how better to appreciate 
the fine points of poetry in general? Why 
not write poetry as many a twice-happy per- 
son, artist in spirit if not always or altogether 
in performance, paints or composes or im- 
provises or dances or recites or sings or acts 
or reads poetry to others? Such indulgence, 
like that of virtue, will be found "its own 
exceeding rich reward " and may lead to the 
wider audience, to publication, possibly to 
fame later. But what painter, what singer, 
what dancer, what musician, amateur or pro- 
fessional, expects to make capital out of every 
slightest exercise or pirouette or melody, 
anticipates the selling of every practice scale 
or song? 

" Beautiful forms and compositions are 
not made by chance" was Ruskin's manner 
of saying that out of many artistic efforts but 
one or two may win way to perfection, "nor 
can they ever be made at small expense.'' 
True genius, of course, knows its own superi- 
ority to commonplace theories and condi- 



22 How to Write Poetry 

tions, but as a rule it is a safe assumption that 
each rare and seemingly artless lark song or 
thrush threnody has been preceded by many 
a practice flight. 

Much of the popular prejudice so long 
rampant against poets and poetry writing, 
the mean if minor martyrdom of popular 
contempt and half-humorous pity, has 
sprung from the marked if unconscious and 
innocent overconfidence and conceit preva- 
lent on the part of the poets, the rhymesters, 
their naive belief — frequently, indeed, 
amounting to conviction — that every poetic 
line must be worth noting, their premature 
eagerness to publish. The test of the public 
square, truly, always is the best and most real 
one, but the mistake of essaying it too soon 
or lightly, of offering crude or imperfect 
wares in the open market must be self-evi- 
dent. Many and many a poet earlier might 
have attained the coveted fame, recognition 
had he been a little more deliberate about 
" hanging his verses in the wind" of public 
print. 

Public attitude and opinion, on the other 



Why Write Poetry? 23 

hand, largely have been to blame for this 
mistaken poetic behavior. While the train- 
ing, the preparation of students of other arts 
has been long and arduous, the poet has been 
left to work out his own salvation with only 
the rudimentary general training of the 
schools and colleges to guide him. The as- 
piring painter, actor, or musician, supplied 
with quite as good general training, expects 
to work on, alone or under highly specialized 
instruction, for long periods before daring 
to deem or dub himself artist. Why not, for 
the aspiring poet, similar period of proba- 
tionary, precautionary tasks? 

Amy Lowell, who certainly has striven 
long and hard in development of her poetic 
gift, is on record as believing that while 
" poetry should exist simply because it is 
created beauty," the poet must " learn his 
trade in the same manner and with the same 
painstaking care as the cabinet-maker" — not 
an unreasonable contention, surely, even if 
tending toward the extreme. Other poets, 
of varied order, have subscribed to such de- 
votional if not reverential doctrine. Only by 






24 How to Write Poetry 

patient schooling is the " cunning artificer " 
in whatever medium brought to be. 

Considered from this viewpoint, this angle, 
the study of poetry writing — with, of 
course, books like How to Write Poetry — 
will be seen as right, reasonable, logical, 
legitimate, to be encouraged. Acceptance, 
adoption of such tenets cannot fail of good 
effect upon the poetry of the future, since by 
and through it better work will be turned 
out by many poetic strivers, who, if only be- 
cause of the seriousness of their poetic atti- 
tude, inevitably will raise the general poetic 
standard. Meanwhile, of course, all the 
world will be writing poetry. But, let it here 
and now be proudly posited, why not? 

Much mere verse will be written, naturally, 
as has been the case ever since the morning 
stars first sang together, with the birds and 
the winds and the waters for admiring, sup- 
porting chorus. But, again, why not, so long 
as the verse be of good, honest, intelligent 
quality and content? We cannot all be great 
poets, any more than we can all be great 
artists of anv other order. But who, there- 






Why Write Poetry? 25 

fore, would refuse to any child of man the 
joy of being a skilled musician, of sketching 
prettily, of singing sweet old hymns and 
lullabies and ballads because grand-opera 
powers or the genius of color be lacking, be 
denied? 

Verse may be, as a Jeffery Farnol char- 
acter has it, u low as low," a thing of "Grub 
street or an attic" (though we all know, at 
heart, that it isn't), it may occupy but a 
modest station on the long, steep road to Par- 
nassus, but at all events it points in the right 
direction, it keeps "its prow turned toward 
good" in the fine phrase of sweet Adelaide 
Proctor, it gives much pure and simple pleas- 
ure, it can but make for good in the heart 
and soul and nature. And the making of 
verse, to say nothing of poetry, is rich with 
joy-giving power as with Lethean consola- 
tion, strong with sweet comfort against sor- 
row, quick with uplifting solace for sad 
hearts and tired or troubled souls. 

It frees from sordid scope and suggestion 
the spirit bound in chains by force of prison- 
ing circumstance, environment, suggestion. 



26 How to Write Poetry 

It gives speech to the dumb, enables the timid, 
the inarticulate to voice the thoughts, feel- 
ings, and emotions that in colder, more cir- 
cumscribed prose must lack relieving outlet of 
expression. It helps the voiceless dreamer 
to endow with wings of vitality the strug- 
gling, surging impulses, aims, and emotions 
that, elsewise, scarce could be whispered to 
God in the dark. 

Reasons, cogent, logical, impressive, for 
the more general writing of poetry might be 
multiplied indefinitely. Here are but a few 
of the more obvious and simple. To every 
poetry-loving soul various others will suggest 
themselves readily. So why should not Mr. 
Everyman — aye, and his entire family — 
write poetry at will and pleasure, write poetry 
as a means' rather than an end, it may be, 
as a poetic exercise more often than a pol- 
ished performance without doubt. 

Some of us, to paraphrase a saying intrin- 
sically poetic, are born to poetry, some of us 
achieve it, some have it thrust upon us by the 
trend of the times, misdirected enthusiasm, 
or the artistic example of others. None can 



Why Write Poetry? 27 

be harmed and all may be helped by the 
endeavor, even by the faulty, the failing en- 
deavor, to add to the world's poetic riches. 
Some, it is hoped, even from this humble, in- 
adequate treatise may receive some slight 
poetic aid. 

Not all the study of or practice in poetry 
writing imaginable will make of the lay 
poetry lover a true poet Only God can 
create in such splendid fashion. But at least 
it can compass no hurt or wrong to follow 
in the footsteps of the true poets, and, should 
you happen to be one of their number in 
embryo, glad and high-hearted treading of 
the poetry trail may help you break out of 
the shell. 



SONG 

" Oh! Love," they said, "is King of Kings, 

And Triumph is his crown. 
Earth fades in flame before his wings, 

And Sun and Moon bow down." — 
But that, I knew, would never do; 

And Heaven is all too high. 
So whenever I meet a Queen, I said, 

I will not catch her eye. 

"Oh! Love," they said, and "Love," they 
said, 

" The gift of Love is this; 
A crown of thorns about thy head, 

And vinegar to thy kiss ! " — 
But Tragedy is not for me; 

And I'm content to be gay. 
So whenever I spied a Tragic Lady, 

I went another way. 

And so I never feared to see 
You wander down the street, 

28 ■ 



Song 29 

Or come across the fields to me 

On ordinary feet. 
For what they'd never told me of, 

And what I never knew; 
It was that all the time, my love, 

Love would be merely you. 

— Rupert Brooke. 



CHAPTER II 

WE MUST HAVE A SKELETON 

TRUE to the plan outlined in the preface, 
this little book will attempt no learned 
poetic disquisitions, will enter into no aca- 
demic or anatomical discussions concerning 
the framework, the bony basis of that most 
plastic of arts and mediums, English poetry. 
Poetry must have a skeleton, a framework, 
of course, just as the human body, soft, 
graceful, pleasing, is built about a firm scaf- 
folding of bone and sinew* But it is not the 
most beautiful of bodies which too clearly 
manifests its concern with this scaffolding. 
In the most beautiful of bodies, on the con- 
trary, the shaping structure scarcely obtrudes 
itself at all. 

And, too, so many, varied and interesting 

are the contemporary theories as to poetic 

construction that the task of elucidating the 

situation, granted anything less than the most 

30 



We Must Have a Skeleton 31 

comprehensive of poetic studies — as the 
most courageous of students — would be 
overwhelming. We have, as Mr. C. E. 
Andrews aptly says, " stress theories, syllabic 
theories, quantitative theories, 'long and 
short ' theories, ' mono-pressure ' theories, 
4 rhythm-wave ' theories, time part theories, 
historical theories" and many others. All 
have their sturdy and impassioned disciples 
and defenders, each of whom is magnificently 
sure of treading the only true path to the 
poetic Olympus. There is as little mutual 
charity, as a rule, among the ranks of 
the poetic disputants as between votaries 
of rival political systems or religious 
cults. "Metrists," again to quote the apt 
Mr. Andrews, u hold to their prosodic preju- 
dices with the tenacity of the old-time theo- 
logians, and scholars will die at the stake for 
a definition " — while English prosody itself 
is not too precise or authoritative. The din 
of eager, conflicting voices deafens the puz- 
zled lay listener; many a poetic agnostic, if 
not atheist, has been made through too ar- 
dent and sonorous missionary-poetic work. 



32 How to Write Poetry 

Each metrical student, therefore, is in- 
vited to find, follow, and if he choose, lay 
down his own special, particular, and favorite 
theory of versification. We shall concern 
ourselves alone with some of the simpler, 
less technical features and phenomena of 
poetry, attempt to assist the avowedly un- 
schooled student — again as suggested by the 
preface — to get at the matter by spirit rather 
than by rote or letter. This method every 
day is proving itself more and more accepta- 
ble in regard to other training systems and 
studies. The Gradgrinds, of course, will 
think otherwise ; will dissent, disagree, disap- 
prove solemnly; but it is doubtful if the 
botanizing infant phenomenon, who glibly 
intrudes into the private life of the floral 
kingdom, ever loves the helpless blossoms 
dissected as does the child who grows up, 
trained only through gratified feeling for 
beauty, in a garden of flourishing flowers. 

Upon one plank only of the many tim- 
bered poetic platform would it seem safe to 
rest in calm, reasonably sure of fairly general 
sympathy and acceptance. That plank may 



We Must Have a Skeleton 33 

be specified as the poetic theory, widely pop- 
ularized by Sidney Lanier's Science of Eng- 
lish Verse, subscribed to by many later poets, 
metrists, and prosodists, which bases the true 
rhythms of verse, as of music, upon equality 
of time elements or divisions. That main- 
tains, in other words, what is consistently ad- 
mitted by utterly inconsistent students and 
systems, that the appeal of poetry is auricular 
rather than ocular, that the " delicate art of 
hearing'' is all-important to poetic composi- 
tion and judgment, that initial poetic appeal 
must be made rather to the ear than to the 
eye. 

This attitude has been and is more or less 
officially maintained by poetic devotees and 
interpreters who elsewise have little in com- 
mon. Underlying recognition of its claims 
may be detected in the work of many great 
and famous poets. The melodious strains of 
Tennyson, Swinburne, Noyes, and others of 
like genius really are verbal music; they 
might be — and sometimes are — enjoyed 
without slightest hint of their meaning, with 
but trivial appreciation of their imagery, 



34 How to Write Poetry 

grace of diction, or even subject; and there is 
no doubt that many of the older poets quite 
frankly, if subconsciously, worked from this 
basis. Amy Lowell, to represent the poetic 
wing directly opposing that of the poets men- 
tioned, says that, " Poetry is rather a spoken 
than a written art," thus admitting, despite 
the strongly intellectual nature of much of 
her own and her followers' poetry, the auric- 
ular appeal of Lanier's definition; and much 
of the most notable free verse of the ultra- 
modern school attains marked beauty through 
and because of the charming, if irregular, 
embodied rhythms, the musical ebb and flow 
of its lines. 

The difference between fixed and free 
verse has been described as depending, for 
the first, upon rhythm, for the second, upon 
cadence; but the fact that these two words 
frequently are used with synonymous intent, 
while no two users, perhaps, attach just the 
same shade of meaning to them, limits their 
usefulness in present regard. However, at 
least partial proof of the truth and sense 
of the indicated theory would seem afforded 



We Must Have a Skeleton 35 

by the knowledge that the rhyme-word iden- 
tical in spelling but not in sound is displeasing 
to the melodist even when the framing poem 
is read silently. The mind, the mental ear, 
recognizes the break in the music, and is 
shocked as the outward ear by a musical false 
quantity or note. 

Blank verse, as free verse and "polyphonic 
prose," depends quite as much upon meter 
for harmonic effect as does its rhyming fel- 
low, the meter, stress, accents, general scan- 
sion employed being merely of a different 
and sometimes more elastic order. Roughly 
speaking, the free verse forms or "patterns" 
may be compared to the chanted rune of the 
primitive troubadour or minstrel; rhyming 
poetry to the ballad form of wedded music 
and story, with its regular melodic phrasing 
and more strongly marked, recurrent, con- 
ventional accent. That the rhythmic, time- 
divisions quality or element is strongly felt 
by many poets in course of production is a 
matter of record. Tennyson and Poe both 
"worked aloud," as it were, pleasing the 
poetic ear, always, even if this meant sacri- 



36 How to Write Poetry 

fice of a beautiful word or phrase or even 
idea. Scott and Browning found the rhyth- 
mic exercise of horseback riding conducive 
to poetic composition. Wordsworth pounded 
out his poems with his cane while tramping 
the Cumberland Hills much, perhaps, as 
Vachel Lindsay pounded out his swinging, 
clinging rhymes and rhythms w r hile tramping 
America's great West. 

"Poetry," says Ludwig Lewisohn, "like 
music is an act in time, and w r e are conscious 
of time only in dividing it. But our method 
of dividing time must reach consciousness 
through one of the senses, the sense of hear- 
ing. It must employ sounds, either single 
sounds or alternate sounds. And as soon as 
alternate sounds are differentiated to save 
them from the monotony that deadens the 
consciousness — such as the dripping of water 
or the ticking of a clock — we reach the im- 
memorial method of stress and fall, that is 
of rhythm." 

So universal, so intrinsic, so impressive is 
the appeal and effect of rhythm in poetry 
that a theory has been seriously postulated 



We Must Have a Skeleton 37 

placing the origin of poetry in the simple 
rhythmical calls and exclamations that dis- 
tinguish alike tribal dances and other social 
expressions of various savage peoples and 
the concerted labors of primitive workers. 
The communal dances, martial, religious, 
emotional, whatever, of the savage always 
are accompanied by a kind of rhythmic 
vocalizing, half shout, half song, by nature 
closely akin to the rhythmic refrains or 
"chanteys" of soldiers, sailors, miners, et 
cetera. An interesting sidelight upon this 
prevailing primitive tendency was furnished 
by the Negro soldiers who so recently have 
proved their wartime virtue and valor. 
While marching, working, waiting for orders 
these Negro soldiers almost invariably sang 
or chanted together — usually repeating and 
reiterating a recurrent burden highly rhyth- 
mic but frequently lacking in meaning or 
consecutive sense. Little children, similarly, 
will croon or murmur half-formed songs and 
refrains over and over until they take to 
themselves more or less definite poetic shape. 
Such facts and expressions are in direct 



38 How to Write Poetry 

line with the " pattern theory" of poetic 
origin that regards the original idea of a 
poem as a sort of pattern in the maker's 
mind or consciousness, u an exact pattern," 
in the words of T. A, Goodell, "to which 
the reader approximates, now more closely, 
now less, as the poetic character of the words 
or the requirements of sense and expression 
permit or demand." 

By the scansion or reading of a poem, the 
poem, as the poet, largely stands or falls, and 
that poet is most fortunate, as most popular, 
who best knows how to make his pattern, be 
this simple or elaborate, clear to the reader. 
When and where the rhythm fails of in- 
tended effect, the poem, the poet, fails also. 
Poe, whose verse patterns scarcely could be 
missed, believed "That rhythm is erroneous 
(at some point or other more or less ob- 
vious) which any ordinary reader can, with- 
out design, read improperly. It is the busi- 
ness of the poet so to construct his line that 
the intention must be caught at once." 

Reflection will show that the more famous, 
as the most beloved poets have succeeded 






We Must Have a Skeleton 39 

admirably in this direction, a success shared 
by writers of popular songs and jingles from 
Mother Goose down — and, without in- 
vidious comparison of widely differing de- 
grees of art, for practically the same reasons. 
George Cohan's " Over There," for example, 
could make no claim to be considered either 
real poetry or real music, but its strongly 
accented, rhythmical phrases, verbal and 
melodic, have fastened it irrevocably upon 
the memories and consciousness of many. 
Kipling, a rhythmic master, and who has been 
quoted as saying that once he has the " tune " 
of a new poem in mind the hardest part of 
the work of composition is over, attains, 
achieves his best effects in similar way. 

Vachel Lindsay, who not only writes many 
poems to a sort' of chanting measure but 
actually chants them in reading, is intensely 
rhythmic also. So is Alfred Noyes, whose 
44 singing verse" is full of charm for the 
rhythm-loving reader, many of whose poems 
might be greatly enjoyed by such reader even 
though utterly ignorant of the English lan- 
guage. Certain modern poets of markedly 



4° How to Write Poetry 

"new" order recently have returned to 
medieval methods and accompanied their 
spoken or intoned poems with stringed in- 
struments. Others, reading their own poetry 
and that of others, by nods, gestures, and 
other mannerisms bear witness that the 
rhythmic response hoped and expected from 
the listener, the reader, has original impetus 
in themselves. 

The difference between poetry of strongly 
marked rhythmic pattern or skeleton and 
rhythmic prose is not so great as might be 
imagined. Much of the strongly rhythmic 
free verse of Walt Whitman and Matthew 
Arnold and W. E. Henley might be read as 
prose and would differ from good prose only 
in the richer quality of its diction; much of 
Joseph Conrad's fine prose, on the other 
hand, could with little effort be turned into 
good free verse. Christopher Morley, in 
this connection, says a piquantly illuminating 
word: 

"The sensible man's quarrel with the pro- 
ponents of free verse is not that they write 
such good prose; not that they espouse the 



We Must Have a Skeleton 41 

natural rhythms of the rain, the brook, the 
wind-grieved tree; this is all to the best, even 
if as old as Solomon. It is that they affect 
to disdain the superlative harmonies of arti- 
fice and ordered rhythms ; that knowing not a 
spondee from a tribrach they vapor about 
prosody, of which they know nothing, and 
imagine to be new what antedates the Upani- 
shads. The haunting beauty of Walter de 
la Mare's delicate art springs from an ear 
of superlative tenderness and sophistication. 
The daintiest alternation of iambus and 
trochee is joined to the serpent's cunning in 
swiftly tripping dactyls. Probably this use 
of artifice is greatly unconscious, the meed of 
the trained musician; but let no singer think 
to upraise his voice before the Lord ere he 
master the axioms of prosody." 

u Imagist journals please copy," Mr. Mor- 
ley quaintly adds. 

Max Eastman, on the contrary, would 
render "the axioms of prosody" unneces- 
sary or at least of negligible importance. To 
his poetic understanding rhyme and rhythm, 
if not parts of the same impulse, at least are 



42 How to Write Poetry 

most closely related. Poetry, to him, has 
less formal basis than that admitted by the 
personally informal author of " Shandygaff," 
" Rocking Horse Poems" and u Songs for a 
Little House." 

" Remember that you are engendering and 
sustaining in the mind a flow of waves, and 
you will need no laws of prosody," says Mr. 
Eastman. " Remember also that the words, 
and groups of words, you work with, are not 
common names grown old in the conveyance 
of a meaning; they are surprising names, 
new-made by you, to choose fresh quali- 
ties and details in the things you speak of, 
and to join them in the mind with other 
things they never knew before, thus sending 
them alive and vivid into that stream of 
heightened consciousness the waves induce. 
You will need no laws of rhetoric. You will 
have knowledge of the act of writing poetry, 
and the surest path to its enjoyment." 

" Rhyme reduplicates the metric pulse 
when feeling runs strong," says Mr. East- 
man further, "as a dancing darkey begins 
to clap his hands with every so many clicks 



We Must Have a Skeleton 43 

of his flying feet. A similar reduplication 
may be, and has been, accomplished in 
poetry by other means, and means less dif- 
ficult to the composer, but rhyme is probably 
the final best of them. Its exciting and hyp- 
notic power was discovered by the Chinese, 
by the Persians, and Arabic poets, and doubt- 
less independently by the late Latins in 
Europe. It is neither a conventional orna- 
ment, nor a mnemonic device, nor esoteric, 
nor ephemeral, in poetry. It is as native to a 
rhythm that flows high as whitecaps to the 
ocean. " 

Which suggestion, if no more highly rated, 
at least should give the scorner of standard 
poetic patterns reason for thought and pause. 

Free verse, being independent of rhyme, 
gains or loses much by the kind and quality 
of its rhythm, as by the separate and usually 
capitalized lines that call attention to it. All 
of these points are much affected by the read- 
ing of the poem, which lends fresh and 
contributory emphasis to the time-divisions 
theory and basis. Good reading is to poetry 
what expression is to rendition of musical 



44 How to Write Poetry 

compositions. The quality of the material 
remains unaffected by the rendition, but the 
rendition means much to the enjoyment, the 
comprehension, reaction of those who repro- 
duce or hear. 

Many a poet, it may be noted here, has 
done good work as the Moliere character 
had talked and written prose, " all his life 
without knowing it." Technically ignorant 
of even the basic rules of poetic compo- 
sition; blissfully unaware of " light" and 
" stressed" endings, of onomatopoeic effects 
and sibilants, of anapaests and amphibrachs, 
of the virtues and dangers of assonance and 
alliteration, of rough or vocalic sequences, 
of all the fine points and polished technicali- 
ties that distinguish skilled poetic craftsmen, 
they yet have achieved highest poetic effects 
and production. They have done this be- 
cause the poetic impulse, intrinsic or reflec- 
tive, surged strongly within them, because 
their natural feeling for poetic melody, tone- 
color, verbal music was exquisitely alive. 

Cale Young Rice, though a finished poet, 
amazingly versatile and prolific, probably 



We Must Have a Skeleton 45 

would have sung tunefully without any poetic 
study or knowledge whatever. It is certain 
that Joyce Kilmer would — and probably did 
in the earlier stages of his all too brief but 
thoroughly poetic existence. And sweet, 
early dying Nora Chesson Hopper, and 
Francis Ledwidge, and Adelaide Crapsey 
and many another gifted young poet un- 
doubtedly wrote much and beautifully with- 
out overmuch training or reflection. It goes 
without saying that many heroic participants 
in the swan-song chorus of the Great War 
sang rather with the heart than the intellect. 
Nevertheless, though the poetry-reading 
public thereby may have missed nothing, the 
poets unquestionably missed for this reason 
great and rare joy and tender in the 
conscious, reverent clothing of cherished 
thoughts, grave and deep or butterfly light 
and elusive, in just the right beautiful words. 
"The poetry born of the war," in the 
opinion of John Galsworthy, "is naturally 
one of the most permanent creations of the 
fighting period and will live in literature as 
of permanent artistic value." 



48 How to Write Poetry 

With " In Memoriam," and the Rubdiydt 
of Omar Khayyam, for example, their cloth- 
ing forms now are indissolubly connected. 
Yet these forms were not original with Ten- 
nyson and Fitzgerald, but, chosen or self- 
choosing for the masterpieces indicated, by 
perfection of harmony and fitness became 
irrevocably wedded to them. For this cause 
they since have been barred to poets of lesser, 
later order, since who now might dare to 
essay them without danger of the imitative 
reproach ? 

Stress, to pass lightly to another matter 
of poetic-anatomical importance, is to poetry 
what accent is to music. Its proper use 
" comes natural" to some poets while others 
acquire it hardly. Loosely speaking, regu- 
lar rhythms may be -compared to regularly 
accented musical strains or compositions, 
rhythms less regular and conventional to the 
syncopated music capable of such good and 
bad results. 

A false, an awkward, an unwarranted 
stress or accent, a badly balanced word or 
sequence offends the ear, the sensitive poetic 



We Must Have a Skeleton 49 

sense like an unjustifiable accent in music, a 
badly balanced picture, and with effects even 
more actively revolting than in the latter in- 
stance. Here, as with good poetic reading 
or scansion, the musical ear, the musical 
sense must give the poet, the poetic student, 
great aid. 

It might almost be said, indeed, that with- 
out such ear, such sense, there could be no 
true poet. It certainly must be difficult to 
compose good poetry lacking such natural 
gift or inclination. But in regard to the 
poetic mechanisms of stress, meter, rhythm 
much may be done, as with the purely tech- 
nical aspects of any art, any craft, by study 
and attention. 

Given — and please, dear reader and fel- 
low-lover of good poetry note this qualifica- 
tion carefully — given at least some saving, 
seedling hint and meed and quota of the true 
poetic ability, feeling and tone. 



TO A FIREFLY BY THE SEA 

Little torch-bearer, alone with me in the 

night, 
You cannot light the sea, nor I illumine life. 
They are too vast for us, they are too deep 

for us. 
We glow with all our strength, but back the 

shadows sweep: 
And after a while will come unshadowed 

Sleep. 

Here on the rocks that take the turning tide ; 

Here by the wide, lone waves and lonelier 
wastes of sky, 

We keep our poet-watch, as patient poets 
should, 

Questioning earth's commingled ill and good 
to us. 

Yet little of them, or naught, have truly un- 
derstood. 

50 



To a Firefly by the Sea 5* 

Bright are the stars, and constellated thick. 

To you, so quick to flit along your flickering 
course, 

They seem perhaps as glowing mates in other 
fields. 

And all the knowledge I have gathered yields 
to me 

Scarce more of the great mystery their won- 
der wields. 
\ 

For the moon we are waiting — and behold 
Her ardent gold drifts up, her sail has caught 

the breeze 
That blows all being through the Universe 

always. 
So now, little light-keeper, you no more need 

nurse 
Your gleam, for lo! she mounts, and sullen 

clouds disperse. 

And I with aching thought may cease to burn, 
And humbly turn to rest — knowing no glow 

of mine 
Can ever be so beauteous as have been to 

me 



5 2 How to Write Poetry 

Your soft beams here beside the sea's elusive 

din: 
For grief too oft has kindled me, and pain, 

and the world's sin. 

— Cale Young Rice. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CLOTHING SUBSTANCE 

THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON, po- 
etic authority, friend of Tennyson, 
Rosetti, and Swinburne, has defined poetry as 
u the concrete and artistic expression of the 
human mind in emotional and rhythmical 
language." Which is but a technical and 
academic way of saying that poetry is human 
emotion fitly, sympathetically expressed. 

Given the spirit of poetry — something to 
say and the ability to say it in poetic man- 
ner — remains, always, the necessity of cloth- 
ing the impulse, the breath of life, with 
words, with visible, audible form. Of poetic 
forms, as of the human form divine, are 
infinite and ever increasing variations, yet 
with no necessary hint of sameness. As 
every human being has one nose, one mouth, 
two eyes, two ears, et cetera, yet few humans 
look even approximately alike; as there are 

53 



54 How to Write Poetry 

black, white, red, yellow, and brown human 
races, constituting physical homes for count- 
less human souls containing each a spark of 
the divine material; so there are countless 
poetic shapes and vehicles from which the 
poet prospective may choose. 

Frequently, of course, especially in regard 
to the poems that are born unbidden, that 
sing their own sweet burdens practically un- 
assisted, the form chooses itself, some dis- 
tinctive, distinguishing, decided lilt or line 
or characteristic cadence coming, unan- 
nounced, to fasten itself on the mind, the 
heart of the poet. In such case the thing 
is decided without and quite outside of the 
poet's will, interference, volition. But, again, 
a beautiful poetic idea may come to a poet 
with but slightest hint of the clothing form 
to follow. In any case the idea, the spirit, 
before it can be shared with other poetry- 
loving humans, must have a body, a form. 

(The non-technical reader however, need 
not here prepare to lay the book aside, leave 
the entire discussion resignedly behind him. 
No technical disquisition on verse forms is 



The Clothing Substance 55 

to follow. We are but considering the high 
lights, the general lines of poetic composi- 
tion. It is steadily assumed and taken for 
granted that the primary, as the academic, 
student will go elsewhere.) 

And, since a given poetic idea must have 
a form, honest and sympathetic fitting of 
form to idea means everything to the suc- 
cess or failure of the resultant creation. 
Many a poem presents example of " an abso- 
lutely beautiful soul in an absolutely wrong 
body," as Florence Barclay said in quite an- 
other connection. Although no hard and 
fast lines can be laid down in such regard, 
poetic form-fitting should be almost prayer- 
fully considered. Unsuitable or inharmoni- 
ous setting has wrenched from purposes of 
natural and lasting beauty many an admi- 
rable, delightful idea. 

Other things being equal, the simpler the 
form, the plainer the language, the better. 
Poetic language should be carefully chosen; 
it need not be quite so direct, so strictly utili- 
tarian as the language of the street corner, 
the business office, the study. Max Eastman 



56 How to Write Poetry 

may be right in believing the essence of poet- 
ry to consist, more than in any other respect, 
in " the enjoyment of certain particles of emo- 
tion or address which are wholly foreign to 
the speech of ordinary communication;" he 
may be not only right but prophetic in de- 
claring that "The Ahs and Thous and the 
Forevermores seem to be more universal in 
the language of realization than any other 
audible or visible thing." But, on the other 
hand, Wordsworth also was right when, as 
early as 1798, he said that the diction of 
English poetry must be reformed, recast in 
such diction as ordinary men use in their 
emotional crises, and that "there neither is 
nor can be any essential difference between 
the language of prose and metrical composi- 
tion." Oftentimes a great, a lovely, an at- 
tractive poetic incident, vision, fancy, may 
be all the stronger, more impressive, more 
charming for being clothed in extreme sim- 
plicity of speech. 

For example, "A Pleasant Thought," by 
means of which Dorothy Keeley has neatly 
expressed a neat idea, made simple, vivid, 



The Clothing Substance 57 

direct, and effective point of contact with the 
universal human consciousness, probably 
would have lost much by having elaborate or 
pretentious garment forced upon it. Most 
casual reading of the piquant little poem will 
show why. 

It is very nice to know 

That I am made so neatly, 
And that my little skin and bones 

Cover me completely. 
For I should blush with very shame 

If, when I was athinking, 
My skin and bones should come undone 

And leave my thoughts ablinking 
And all naked in the light — 

Oh, I am very glad to feel 
My fastenings are tight. 

Such pleasing and apparently unstudied 
harmony of phrasing, of shaping, of cloth- 
ing the thought with form lends force and 
one-pointedness, to use an expressive East 
Indian term, to many a greater poem "new" 
and of the more conventional variety. When 
the thought is thus fitly embodied the effect 



58 How to Write Poetry 

of the finished poem is like that of an ap- 
pealing picture in a perfect frame. 

Ideally, it stands to reason, a small idea 
should have small setting and vice versa. A 
good, a great idea now and then triumphs 
over unsuitable form as a beautiful body 
occasionally triumphs over unbecoming drap- 
ery, poor dressing, but this is setting a heavy 
handicap, asking much of the poetic soul so 
sadly hampered by its material housing. 
Once in a while, a cycle of blue moons, comes 
a poem, of whatever order, that scarce could 
be improved in respect of clothing. George 
Herbert's "Virtue," known and loved the 
world over for simple, suggestive sweetness, 
may be instanced. This poem gains in 
impression, effect alike from idea, phrasing, 
rhyme, rhythm, stress, meter, form, all 
features of its construction — though it is 
possible that the gentle Herbert, singing 
from spirit rather than intellect, may not 
have known how good and scholarly a piece 
of work he had so happily turned out. 

Present rereading of this poem can harm 
no one, so, for sake of pressing home the 



The Clothing Substance 59 

thought-clothing moral, the cherished jewel 
shall be honored here. 

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright ! 

The bridal of the earth and sky — 
The dew shall weep thy fall tonight; 

For thou must die. 

Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave 
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye, 

Thy root is ever in its grave, 
And thou must die. 

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, 
A box where sweets compacted lie, 

My music shows ye have your closes 
And all must die. 

Only a sweet and virtuous soul, 
Like seasoned timber, never gives ; 

But though the whole world turn to coal 
Then chiefly lives. 

Not every good poem, of course, can at- 
tain such smoothly cumulative and flowing 



6o How to Write Poetry 

construction, climb to such perfect climax. 
With some poems, indeed, such accomplish- 
ment, even in attempt, would be a mistake. 
But, whenever reasonably possible, construc- 
tive perfection should be sought and studied. 
" Virtue," it will be noticed, satisfies the in- 
tellectual desire for progressive thought, the 
artistic craving for delicate finish, no less 
than the emotional, sensuous hunger for 
musical rhythm and rhyme. 

The chief reason for rhyme, it may here 
be suggested, lies in the satisfaction of this 
emotional, sensuous, romantic hunger. Un- 
rhymed stanzas have their place; they have 
been used to good effect by many of the ster- 
ling English poets — Blake, Southey, Tenny- 
son, et cetera — with and without employ- 
ment of a recurrent refrain; more recent 
poets have not disdained effective use of the 
unrhymed stanza ; but as a rule the unrhymed 
stanza, lacking the virtues of either fixed or 
free verse, proves disappointing. Genius, 
we know, makes its own rules, is not, broadly 
speaking, amenable to the rules of others. 
But the regular stanza, as a form at once 



The Clothing Substance 61 

fixed and arbitrary, albeit quite optional with 
the poet, most frequently seems to need and 
demand its conventional complement of 
rhyme. 

The four-lined stanza is, perhaps, the 
most popular of all the clothing forms open 
to poetic ideas, and this, no doubt, is true, 
at least in part, because of the comparative 
ease with which it may be handled, manipu- 
lated, molded. Two-line and three-line stan- 
zas, usually rhymed, have been much used 
also, but they require more skilful treat- 
ment and are not so easily induced to pro- 
duce effects equally pleasing. The short 
stanza, generally speaking, should close with 
a period, embody an entire thought or di- 
vision of one, and it is difficult, without 
visible strain or undue repression, to ensure 
this within boundaries too sternly restricted. 
Terza rima, a " continuous form composed 
of pentameter tercets, with a quatrain 
for concluding stanza," mainly is dis- 
tinguished, to English readers, by fact of 
being the form used in Dante's Divina Com- 
media though it has served the turns, in Eng- 



62 How to Write Poetry 

lish, of Milton, Byron, Shelley (with cer- 
tain modifications), William Morris, and 
Alfred Noyes. 

The quatrain, to progress naturally along 
the path of poetic construction, probably, as 
has been suggested, may be reckoned first 
favorite with poets as an order. It may be 
employed with any length of line, from the 
" short," "common" and "long" meters of 
the old-fashioned hymnals to Tennyson's in- 
comparable "In Memoriam" arrangement 
and the variously rhymed and accented 
forms of Noyes, Houseman, Kipling, and 
many other masters; from the simplest tro- 
chaics to the hexameter, heptameter, and 
pentameter modes used by the authorities 
noted. Five-line and six-line stanzas are not 
now as widely liked as the four-line stand-by. 
But Robert Herrick and his contemporaries 
loved to work in such media ; they were oft 
approved by Rosetti and Swinburne, while 
Yeats and Noyes have employed them too. 

The seven-line stanza has only been used, 
authentically, in the " rhyme royal," or, to 
cling to the original French term, the chante 



The Clothing Substance 63 

royale, beginning with Chaucer and coming 
down, in occasional use, to Morris. The 
eight-line stanza, variously rhymed, was 
much liked by the Elizabethans, and enjoyed 
partial revival, in the nineteenth century, by 
Byron and Keats. It would seem to make 
but slight appeal to contemporary poets. 
The Spenserian stanza, invented for the 
Faerie Queene and consisting of nine iambic 
lines, eight pentameters concluded by an Al- 
exandrine (hexameter) rhymed ababbcbcc, 
is highly wrought and, therefore, mainly use- 
ful for elaborately decorative writing. It 
may well be used — should the contemporary 
poet care to use it — for ornate narrative 
productions, each wide-flung stanza being 
adaptable to a separate scene or phase of 
the story; but for the simple, realistic, intel- 
lectual, or impressionistic themes most popu- 
lar at present it would prove unsuitable in- 
deed. 

Of these various stanzas, as of the son- 
net, ode, blank verse, heroic and other coup- 
lets, to many of which forms the indicated 
stanzas lead and with all of which they may 



64 How to Write Poetry 

be said to be in key or harmony, no exam- 
ples need here be given. Most of the verse 
forms indicated are too well known to re- 
quire recalling to the memory. A little wider 
latitude, however, may be allowed in consid- 
eration of certain less commonplace yet poet- 
ically popular modes originally derived from 
the French. 

Of these a number, including the ballade, 
the rondel, the rondeau, the triolet, the vil- 
lanelle, and the sestina, have been more or 
less effectively naturalized in England and 
America. The majority of them, born in 
medieval Provence, were popular with 
French poets of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries. Chaucer, whom Amy Lowell calls 
"the most modern of poets," claiming that 
he " did what the poets of the present are try- 
ing to do," Gower and other contempora- 
neous English poets worked in and with 
these forms but could not make them popular 
in English, despite the similarity then pre- 
vailing in regard to French and English 
laws of rhyme. In the seventies Andrew 
Lang,. Austin Dobson, W. E. Henley and 



The Clothing Substance 65 

Edmund Gosse perhaps more successfully ex- 
perimented with these poetic modes, and 
still later young poets in England and the 
United States have made varyingly success- 
ful attempts. 

Swinburne's famous "A Ballad of Dream- 
land," taking the ballad under considera- 
tion, has been called " the most musical bal- 
lad in English." It shall herewith be set 
forth as most effective argument in favor of 
this just and interesting contention. The 
case, so tried, will go by acclamation and de- 
light. 

I hid my heart in a nest of roses, 

Out of the sun's way, hidden apart; 

In a softer bed than the soft white snow's is, 

Under the roses I hid my heart. 

Why would it sleep not? why should it start, 

When never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred? 

What made sleep flutter its wings and part? 

Only the song of a secret bird. 

Lie still, I said, for the wind's wing closes, 
And mild leaves muffle the keen sun's dart; 



66 How to Write Poetry 

Lie still, for the wind on the warm sea dozes, 

And the wind is unquieter yet than thou art. 

Does a thought in thee still as a thorn's 
wound smart? 

Does the fang still fret thee of hope de- 
ferred? 

What bids the lids of thy sleep dispart? 

Only the song of a secret bird. 

The green land's name that a charm encloses, 
It never was writ in the traveller's chart, 
And sweet on its trees as the fruit that grows 

is, 
It never was sold in the merchant's mart. 
The swallows of dreams through its dim 

fields dart, 
And sleep's are the tunes in its tree-tops 

heard; 
No hound's note wakens the wildwood hart, 
Only the song of a secret bird. 

ENVOY 
In the world of dreams I have chosen my 

part, 
To sleep for a season and hear no word 



The Clothing Substance 67 

Of true love's truth or of light love's art, 
Only the song of a secret bird. 

Swinburne's "Ballad of Frangois Villon, 
Prince of all Ballad-Makers," Andrew 
Lang's " To Theocritus in Winter," and Al- 
fred Noyes' lovely "A Triple Ballad of Old 
Japan" offer marked and charming ballad 
examples which the poet prospective is urged 
to study at leisure. The chante royale, 
which Edmund Gosse defined as " the ne plus 
ultra of legitimate difficulty in the construc- 
tion of a poem," is a development of the bal- 
lad. It has been mainly used by French 
poets for high and dignified themes. 

The rondel, rondeau, and roundel are 
closely allied forms distinguished only in 
modern usage. The rondel has thirteen 
lines with two rhymes and a recurrent re- 
frain. The rondeau has thirteen lines divided 
into three stanzas, boasts three rhymes and 
has an unrhymed refrain after the eighth and 
thirteenth lines. The roundel, apparently 
peculiar to Swinburne, uses the first word of 
the first half of the opening line for refrain,, 



68 



How to Write Poetry 



but it differs from the rondeau in rhyming the 
refrain with the second line of the poem. 
Austin Dobson's "The Wanderer" is a fine 
example of the rondel. 

Love comes back to his vacant dwelling, — 
The old, old Love that we knew of yore ! 
We see him stand by the open door, 

With his great eyes sad, and his bosom 
swelling. 

He makes as though in our arms repelling, 
He fain would lie as he lay before; — 

Love comes back to his vacant dwelling, — 
The old, old Love that we knew of yore ! 

Ah, who shall help us from over-telling, 
That sweet forgotten, forbidden lore! 
E'en as we doubt in our hearts once more, 
With a rush of tears to our eyelids welling, 
Love comes back to his vacant dwelling. 
* 
Good recent exemplification of the rondeau 
form is provided by Lyon Mearson's " Ron- 
deau of Any Soldier." 



The Clothing Substance 69 

When I come home from Flanders' field, 
From Flanders' field, from Flanders' field, 
I'll know the taste of everyday, 
The little things we do and say, 
The joys an even life can yield, 
What potent peace a day can wield, 
For I have dreamed on Flanders' field 
Of grace-notes in Life's scale to play 
When I come home. 

I've seen the thrush grow mute and sealed 
On Flanders' field, on Flanders' field, 

For War does smaller things dismay; 

I want to live Life's common way, 
I'll know the secret War revealed 
When I come home. 

Mr. Mearson, incidentally, has worked 
out interesting examples of the rondeau 
which turns upon a pun and which, in Mr. 
Mearson's opinion, constitutes "the real 
function of this old form." By many, how- 
ever, the rondeau has become practically 
wedded, at least by more frequent usage, to 
romantic or sentimental ideas. 



?o How to Write Poetry 

Let us, for roundel exhibit, hie us back to 
Swinburne. Here is a charming roundel ex- 
pression from "The Way of the Wind." 

The wind's way in the deep sky's hollow 
None may measure, as none can say 
How the heart in her shows the swallow 
The wind's way. 

Hope nor fear can avail to stay 

Waves that whiten on wrecks that wallow, 

Times and seasons that wane and slay. 

Live and love, till the strong night swallow 
Thought and hope and the red last ray, 
Swim the waters of years that follow 
The wind's way. 

And let us give thanks to Dobson for good 
exposition of the triolet form. 

Rose kissed me today. 

Will she kiss me tomorrow? 
Let it be as it may, 
Rose kissed me today. 






The Clothing Substance 7* 

But the pleasure gives way 
To a savor of sorrow; — 

Rose kissed me today, — 
Will she kiss me tomorrow? 

The triolet, like good golf, looks easy but 
proves less easy than it looks upon attempt- 
ing. Marguerite Wilkinson regards the 
triolet as "simply a rhythmical echo of 
pretty, whimsical, personal emotion," but the 
triolet form, though mainly used now for 
lightest of light verse, "society" or senti- 
mental, was seriously employed by the Old 
French poets and occasionally, even in this 
brisk twentieth-century era, has yielded good 
serious results. As will be noticed, the triolet 
has eight lines, with the first and second re- 
peated twice, and with the second line used 
again as the last. The fifth and sixth lines 
offer tempting opportunity for a climax, 
which explains the popularity of the triolet 
as a medium for humorous, witty, or grace- 
ful ideas. 

For the villanelle, composed of nineteen 
lines — five three-line stanzas and an envoy 



72 How to Write Poetry 

— this form employs two rhymes, arranged! 
aba for the stanza and abaa for the envoy. 
The first and second lines of the first stanza 
are used for the refrain; they alternate as the 
third line of each successive stanza and 
finally complete the envoy as a couplet. W. 
E. Henley's "A Dainty Thing's the Villa- 
nelle," while far indeed from the kind of 
poetic production popularly associated with 
this brilliant, sardonic writer, is one of the 
best, daintiest, and most satisfying examples 
of villanelle compositions to be found in the 
modern poetry lists. 

A dainty thing's the Villanelle 
Sly, musical, a jewel in rhyme, 
It serves its purpose passing well. 

A double-clappered silver bell 

That must be made to clink in chime, 
A dainty thing's the Villanelle; 

And if you wish to flute a spell, 

Or ask a meeting 'neath the lime, 
It serves its purpose passing well. 



The Clothing Substance 73 

You must not ask of it the swell 

Of organs grandiose and sublime — 
A dainty thing's the Villanelle; 

And filled with sweetness, as a shell 

Is filled with sound, and launched in time, 
It serves its purpose passing well. 

Still fair to see and good to smell 

As in the quaintness of its prime, 
A dainty thing's the Villanelle, 
It serves its purpose passing well. 

The sestina, to complete the count of 
French verse forms sufficiently used to de- 
mand present inclusion, has six stanzas of 
six lines each. It ends with a tercet. The 
six end words of the first stanza must be 
repeated, in fixed but varying order, in each 
stanza. The sestina, invented by that in- 
genious old troubadour, Arnaut Daniel, now, 
because of its distinguished and distinguish- 
ing development by Petrarch and Dante, is 
considered rather an Italian than a French 
form. It is equally difficult to produce, with 



74 How to Write Poetry 

success, in any language, though Swinburne 
and Kipling each have used the sestina form 
to advantage. It is not, in any case, a form 
to be recommended to those unversed in 
poetic expression, save, perhaps, as a stimu- 
lating exercise, and even for the most skilful 
artist more than occasional use will fail to 
repay the necessary effort of production. The 
sestina, in fact, may serve as well as any 
other instrument for impressing the moral 
that, alike for amateur and professional 
poets, the simplest form usually will be found 
most effective and fine. 

Free verse forms, as rarely reducible to 
known or generally acknowledged poetic 
rules and regulations, represent the direct an- 
tithesis of the highly finished and specialized 
verse forms just considered, the poetic wing 
most strongly opposed to their classic regu- 
larity and correctness. Free verse takes to 
itself, upon occasion, forms sharply defined 
and distinctive as unusual. But, at least to 
the perception of the ordinary poetic reader 
and student, it makes its own rules, is a law 
— the only law — unto itself, its votaries, its 



The Clothing Substance 75 

creators. Because of the untrammeled laws 
of life and creation preferred, exemplified by 
free verse enthusiasts and followers the 
forms chosen as thought-molds by the lead- 
ing free verse exponents are difficult of classi- 
fication, analysis. Free verse, therefore, 
most naturally receives attention in connec- 
tion with manner rather than form. 



THE NEW WORLD- 

I am the voice of your city 
Calling to you for help. 

I am in peril. 

For the war and its caifse 

I gave men and money and workers, 

And sacrifices of food and warmth 

As was my part. 

The war is won. 

Now may I make my cry. 

Alas ! My hope of beauty is gone from me ! 

A black pall of smoke is falling about me. 

Shall my danger be forgotten? 

Shall I be left to choke and strangle 

In an endless night? 

The world cried out at the destruction 
Of the old dignity and beauty of Reims. 
(Deep in my heart I hoped that in some 

future 
I might have a beauty of my own.) 
The world cried out at injuries done 
To innocent Belgian children. 
7 6 



The New World 77 

(Deep in my heart I prayed that mine 
Might be wholesome under their home sky.) 
These hopes are crying aloud to you. 

What boots it to widen streets, 

To build bridges, and white facades 

To bury them in smoke ? 

Can children grow to manhood in streets 

Where no sun can penetrate? 

And their lungs are black with grime? 

The workers are coming back. 

The women who have given themselves are 

set free. 
There is money left. 

There are kindly men, and wise and strong. 
I summon them all to rescue me ! 
To make me worthy of that new world 
For which I gave them, and for which they 

fought. 

Make me beautiful, and clean. 

Give me back God's sky. 

Take away this choking curse of smoke. 

— Frances Shaw. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE INDWELLING SPIRIT 

WHAT flesh is to the anatomical struc- 
ture, what clothing is to the body, 
such stands the relation of style to subject, 
of manner of expression to the indwelling 
spirit which alone differentiates true poetry 
from mere verse. 

As a skeleton, however perfect, must be 
fitly fleshed to achieve highest ideals of 
beauty, so an idea, however beautiful, must 
be fitly expressed to achieve fair chance in 
a world so full of lovely and charmingly ex- 
pressed ideas, thoughts, and fancies. That 
style, for this reason, must be of real im- 
portance to subject, must serve the pure pur- 
poses of the indwelling spirit if this spirit is 
to attain justice, must be evident even to the 
poetically blind. 

"Though I think like Sophocles or dream 

like Swinburne, what shall it profit when I 

78 



The Indwelling Spirit 79 

certainly cannot write like them?" perti- 
nently asks the wise anonymous writer of an 
illuminating essay, "About Writing Poetry," 
published in the January, 19 19, issue of 
Harper's Magazine. 

"All strong emotion," in the suggestive 
verdict of Ellen Burns Sherman, "is self- 
authenticating and lops verbiage, till the 
throb of the writer's heart beats the rhythm 
of his measures." j 

The verity of this statement, undoubtedly, 
explains why so many magnificent messages 
have been given to the world through the 
medium of poetry. The throbbing of the 
writers' hearts, aided by or, on the contrary, 
transcending mere verbal organ of delivery, 
beats out the measure of their soul strivings 
just as many a minor musician and versifier 
beats out, with foot or fingers, the sustaining 
measure of his song. 

The birth of an idea, of any kind, must 
mean a great moment to the human being 
consciously giving birth to it, the birth of an! 
idea representing a distinct onward step in 
humanity's progress. Sometimes, of course,' 



80 How to Write Poetry 

great moments pass by unrecognized, un- 
realized, unheralded; sometimes human be- 
ings are too modest or too intrinsically great 
properly to evaluate their own intellectual, 
emotional products. But ideas, none the less, 
are scarce enough to be epoch making to the 
individual honored by their temporary resi- 
dence. Which is but another way of saying 
that when a poetic idea comes to life in the 
mind, the soul of any child of humanity, when 
an idea demands or is considered worthy of 
poetic clothing, expression, the linguistic gar- 
ment should be as carefully considered, as 
harmonious, as perfect as may be. 

Granted, then, the right of a poetic idea to 
the form most closely approximating the per- 
fect in that special regard, comes, again, the 
crucial test of style or manner. Poetic form 
chosen, how best, by means of sympathetic 
language, pour into that form, that mold, 
the thing that so richly deserves saying? 
Style and spirit being so closely akin, or so 
utterly, destructively at variance, on their 
good or bad union depend all the glad pos- 
sibilities of a good marriage, the disappoint- 



The Indwelling Spirit 



M 



ing isrresses of a poor one. Imagine the 
bug free verse of Matthew Arnold, of 
William Blake, or Wait Whitman attuned to 
tripping trochaics or tortured into the duple- 
triple rhymes and rhythms so elective, har- 
monious in other connection! Or think, be- 
fore lightly acclaiming this mighty matter oi 
style and subject, of countless lovely, singing 
lyrics bereft oi their musical lines. 

The lesson of style, of suiting style to sub- 
ject, subordinating bodily expression to the 
indwelling spirit that means, that makes a 
poem, like all other forms oi art is best 
learned from a combination oi feeling and 
study, receives vivid educational pointing 
from full, free, reverent but not imitative 
familiarity with the works oi poetic masters. 
There are poems, as previously has been sug- 
gested, as naturally, inevitably cast in a cer- 
tain mold, destined to a certain manner oi 
expression as though poured into such mold, 
through such manner, straight from the urn 
of the Muses. There are others that would 
have been better recast in the pouring- 
There are poems distinguished by sue:: per- 



82 How to Write Poetry 

feet harmony of matter and material as to 
admit of no possible improvement. There 
are other poems, sometimes great poems, 
concerning which improving changes surely 
might be made. 

Always this moot matter of poetic style, 
of expressing spirit in substance, has rent 
poetic camps, occupied the attention of poetic 
enthusiasts, students. Voltaire's fervent dec- 
laration that literature has benefited by the 
quarrels of authors perhaps has been es- 
pecially true in regard to the literature known 
as poetic. The discussion as to the respective 
merits and virtues of various manners in- 
dubitably began with the first human min- 
strel's jealous or technical interest in his 
earliest rival. It is possible, or at least im- 
aginable, that when the morning stars first 
sang together different parts of the " spacious 
universe" were at variance as to the har- 
monic values of given parts of the chorus. 
Recent arguments as to "conventional" or 
" free verse " modes and manners are but 
echoes of the old-time poetic arguments and 
eloquence rekeyed to contemporary note. 



The Indwelling Spirit 83 

Briefs for and against the fixed-form man- 
ner as classic, stabilizing, dignified, or crusty 
with rigid and outgrown limitations, for and 
against free verse as humanly, artistically 
flexible, inchoate, rich in expressive scope and 
opportunity or a mere refuge for the indolent 
alike are as old as the ages. Recurrent popu- 
larity of a certain kind of poetic expression, 
of spirit-styling, is followed by an inevitable, 
inescapable reaction to the other. The 
poetic quarrel often bids fair to deafen the 
non-disputatious bystander, to disgust the dis- 
interested or careless, but the fact remains 
that no definite law can be laid down, ex 
cathedra, in this eager and oft-renewed 
battle, because there is, there can be no poetic 
Vatican, no court of final resort. 

Each of the contestants is right at some 
times, in some places. Poetic diction is open 
to almost as many opportunities of effective 
variation as the weather, " and all of them 
good" as in the cheery old countryman's 
serene and faithful acceptance. All imagin- 
able diversities of poetic style and media are 
needed to express, interpret unending, ever- 



84 How to Write Poetry 

changing, ever-growing varieties and varia- 
tions of human, poetic thought. 

Free verse undoubtedly has served, in 
some cases, as an excuse for laziness, for 
evading the stern, high task of finishing a 
piece of work, an artistic production in best 
possible manner. Fixed poetic forms un- 
doubtedly, in some instances, have conduced 
to monotony, dullness, lack of piquant appeal 
and expression. Both, with equal justice, 
may be accused of having fostered the mak- 
ing of mere verse rather than poetry, the 
turning out of much mediocre craft-effort. 
But this is no more to the discredit of either 
than the turning out of poor or soulless crea- 
tions is to the discredit of the paint tube, the 
violin bow, or the carpenter's chisel. Per- 
sonal skill and taste are at fault. 

"The poet's aim," it has been well said, 
" is always the immediate transmission of 
experience into art." Miss Lowell, herself 
conversant with the greatest in all worth 
while and serious schools of poetry, is right, 
if not highly original, in asserting that 
" poetry is an art, and great poetry is a 



The Indwelling Spirit 85 

supreme art." To restrict any branch of art 
to any single medium of expression would be 
manifestly unreasonable and foolish. Why, 
since each recurring season of the year has 
its own special charms, advantages, beauties, 
deny to any one its own peculiar right and 
place? 

And, in addition to the diverse necessities 
of human thought-production much must de- 
pend, in the matter of poetic output, upon the 
thought-jewel to be provided with setting, the 
kind of setting best suited for that particular 
gem. The basic idea for a poem really is but 
poem material; to attain its destined beauty 
it must be developed, polished, perfected gen- 
erally. If for no other reason the poetic 
beginner, admitting fullest catholicity of 
poetic thought and purpose, will do well — 
while becoming as conversant as may be with 
all known forms of poetic expression — to 
cling rather closely, at least until the poetic 
wings have developed beyond mere pinfeath- 
ers, to the more classic, conventional modes 
and manners. Granted that the inner call to 
less standardized forms be not absolutely 



86 How to Write Poetry 

irresistible, his chances of consequent success 
will be greatly increased. 

A sonnet may not be too easy to manage, 
a quatrain may offer infinite opportunities of 
mistake, perhaps of conscious or unconscious 
imitation; but either, as a, rule, will prove 
easier of successful handling than the un- 
charted, if accurately measured, cadences of 
Miss Lowell, the color-rhapsodies of John 
Gould Fletcher, the quaint psychology of 
Edgar Lee Masters, the quainter phrase- 
ology of Ezra Pound. Moreover the begin- 
ning poet is prone, strive as he may in 
opposite direction, for love and reverence of 
a given high example to attempt similar 
craftsmanship under unwarranted conditions. 
And no sartorial misfit, no second-hand gar- 
ment is so pitiably unbecoming or degraded 
as a poetic drapery unsuitably applied. 

Whitman's free verse, for example, be it 
reckoned as poetry or " impassioned prose/' 
has a rhythmic sweep, a majesty that appeals 
to both senses and spirit. But the Whitman 
free verse poems not only are difficult of 
effective duplication but in manner are highly 



The Indwelling Spirit 87 

unsuited to less impressive ideas. So, too, 
with the Tennysonian flow of "Launcelot 
and Elaine," the distinctive shaping and 
phrasing that lend inimitable character and 
charm to such unrhymed poems as Arnold's 
"Philomela," Henley's " Hawthorne and 
Lavender," Masters' " Spoon River An- 
thology" or many of the finest examples of 
Carl Sandburg or Robert Frost. 

No argument is offered, of course, in favor 
of limiting the efforts of young poets to mere 
hackneyed forms and measures. Nothing 
could be further from poetic reason or jus- 
tice. The suggestion merely is advanced that 
with poetic writing, as with all arts and 
crafts, simple, classic forms usually are the 
best with which to begin. 

Nor need the striving poetic Muse be 
cramped or hampered by early, temporary 
adherence to poetic forms hallowed by long 
centuries of beautiful production. Classic 
forms — as the free verse forms also — pro- 
vide chance and scope for the freest, most 
untrammeled of poetic fancies, outpourings, 
expression. No single school of poetry has 



How to Write Poetry 



monopoly in this direction. The favorite and 
frequently expressed theory of the vers* 
librists, to the effect that greater freedom of 
form permits greater opportunity for rhyth- 
mic effects intrinsically expressive because un- 
bound by conventional rules and regulations, 
has not, it would seem, received conclu- 
sive factual support. The work of the 
" newer" poets, the vers librists, abounds in 
strong and fine example of rhythmic phras- 
ing and depictive language. But examples 
quite as strong and fine may be found, in 
equal abundance, in the works of the most 
distinctively "melodic" of the poet choir. 

The tone color and directly interpretative 
possibilities also warmly advanced in favor 
of free verse are, again, by no means pecu- 
liar to this form of poetic production. And 
the danger of free verse, especially for the 
comparatively untried poet, lies in the temp- 
tation and tendency to follow the line of least 
resistance, to allow the thing attempted to 
degenerate, deteriorate, to fail of highest 
possibility because of the supposed freedom 
from all limiting restrictions. Better than 



The Indwelling Spirit 89 

this evil the opposing alternative of too care- 
ful and polished diction, too strict devotion 
to form. 

And, too, in this matter of first aid to 
poetic form-fitting, of providing channel for 
the indwelling spirit of the poem to reach 
outward eye and ear, something, aye, much, 
must depend upon the way in which the un- 
clothed idea has come into being. Some 
poets — real poets — deliberately choose an 
idea, as deliberately select the form in which 
they choose to express it, as deliberately com- 
pose, " smooth out," polish the completed 
production. Others are fired by some 
mighty impulse of love or charity or human 
sympathy or wrath or sociological, humani- 
tarian ardor. These, usually, make poems 
only when moved by the "divine afflatus," 
and find the work of composition well under 
way by the time they sit down to the task of 
actual writing. Many of the world's greatest 
poems have been written in this manner. 
Some poets, indeed, declare that the basic 
thoughts for their most successful poems have 
come to them full-blown, that they play the 



90 How to Write Poetry 

part of amanuensis, spokesman more nearly 
than any other, at least in so far as the vital 
part of the resultant poem is concerned. 

Lowell's " The Vision of Sir Launf al M was 
written between sun and sun. Several of 
Browning's most impressive poems were put 
on paper almost as rapidly as might have 
been a casual letter. Jessie B. Rittenhouse, 
to instance a contemporary singer who some- 
times has been accused of almost too care- 
fully carving and polishing her exquisite little 
poems, says that in reality they come to her, 
practically as printed, on the street, as she 
waits for a friend, in all sorts of unexpected 
ways and times and places, and that her 
highest successes are those in which she 
scarcely finds it necessary to change a word 
or a line. On the other hand that exquisite 
singer, Sara Teasdale, carries her beautiful 
poems about with her, mentally and spiritu- 
ally, sometimes for long periods before they 
reach the stage in which they may be com- 
mitted to paper, shaping, polishing, perfect- 
ing line by line. 

The anonymous writer of the fascinating 



The Indwelling Spirit 91 

magazine article already mentioned, a writer 
said, under his own name, to be familiar to 
the ordinarily cultured reader, " who on more 
than one occasion has seen it signed to verse 
and prose of peculiar distinction," gives an 
interesting description of the way poetic com- 
position begins with him. The description, 
the more interesting because reproducing the 
poetic experience, the compositive psychology 
of many, shall be repeated here. 

"Have you never developed pictures in 
the dark-room, and watched the image form 
upon the film? You know how first the high 
lights appear, a touch here and a mass there 
and an outline yonder, separately and noth- 
ing like a picture; then gradually the space 
between fills into a design wherein the first 
intense bits have their places; and then the 
shadows and fine details come last of all. 
And you know how sometimes one picture 
never will come wholly clear, or another 
flashes forth too quickly, only to fade away 
again; and the result in either case is the 
same- 1 - a flat, dull, foggy thing with all its 
values wrong. So that your whole work is 



92 How to Write Poetry 

to bring each image to its best and fit it there, 
not spoiling force in refinement nor detail for 
the sake of intensity. Well, it is exactly like 
that. I have beforehand the idea, the vision 
of what the thing is meant to be — a plan of 
rhythm and thought and the tone or feeling 
of it all. So I sit down and make a dark- 
room of myself, shutting out every other 
light except the red glow of imagination. 
Then come first the high lights, a phrase in 
one place, a line or sentence in another, and 
again some cadence or movement of the verse 
— as casually and as much without construc- 
tion or control of mine as the scattered mark- 
ings on the film. I recognize them by their 
places in the plan, and I try hard to hold 
them there until I can fill in the connection 
and bring all into form and harmony; and 
that is sheer technical labor. These high 
lights are the important parts in the sense 
of being climaxes or openings or endings, 
dominant rhyme-words or essential essences 
that must be just so, and upon which the rest 
depends; important also in that I do not and 
cannot make them — they happen, as if I re- 



The Indwelling Spirit 93 

membered them; or they refuse to happen, 
as if I could not remember; but of course 
in the completed work no more important 
than the half-tones and organism of the de- 
sign which I myself must make. And some- 
times I have only the lights, and cannot for 
the life of me fill in the rest; and sometimes 
the whole image flares and fades, and the 
lights get lost in the shadows, and the work 
dulls into a vile, flat mockery of what I meant 
to do. And — only sometimes — there are 
lucky days when thought and mood and 
movement fit themselves into form at once, 
so that I have hardly more than to write 
down words as if I were taking dictation 
in a dream." 

This writer, who believes that " the better 
part of everybody's daily brain work is in- 
tuitive or subconscious," also believes that 
" inspiration of itself is nothing — mere day- 
dreams of no use unrealized; and between 
them and their realization lies all that a man 
may compass of labor and honesty and 
hoarded skill." 

This is why, to the thoughtful poet quoted, 



94 How to Write Poetry 

technique means " the one supremely interest- 
ing thing to toil and talk about ; not because 
the execution matters so much itself as the 
design, but because ideas happen whereas 
their embodiment must be made." 

u Art here," it is aptly added, "is in no 
special category. The scientist groping for 
material law, the engineer scheming some 
new structure, the statesman ordering the 
affairs of men, merchant or tinker or soldier, 
or whom you will — all have their share in 
the one sacred fire; they must all alike learn 
and agonize to forge therein any achieved 
event of earth use; and I cannot see why 
the artist need claim exemption from the 
study and practice of his proper trade." 

It is interesting to note that many vigorous 
poets, ancient and modern, have reported 
flashes of poetic inspiration similar to those 
described by this man of books in the long 
paragraph given, and that they, too, though 
with no thought of choosing or changing the 
form already indicated, have toiled and ago- 
nized to preserve and clothe such inspiration 
as it should be, to render to the indwelling 



The Indwelling Spirit 95 

spirit of the poem all care and reverence due. 
Technique with them, as with the poet-scholar 
just quoted, has meant striving after perfect 
interpretation rather than insistence upon 
creation. Browning's "How We Brought 
the Good News from Ghent to Aix," for one 
notable example, came to him almost whole 
and instantly, line for line, measure for meas- 
ure, on the ocean, out of a clear sky. 

And here — -in recalling that in such in- 
stances poets frequently have found inspira- 
tion practically like "striving to remember" 
— is but another way of sharpening the point 
so oft reiterated in present connection — 
that style must be the servant of subject, 
always, that the correlation of material and 
manner must be as nearly perfect, as har- 
monious as possible. That mode, that style, 
is best suited to a poetic idea which impresses 
the reader, the hearer, with the inevitable 
nature of the union, in regard to which it 
would be difficult to suggest improving alter- 
ations. That mode, that style, is unsuited 
which impresses the reader, the hearer, with 
the feeling that it leaves room for improve- 



96 How to Write Poetry 

merit. And there are countless striking ex- 
amples of both well and ill-fitting poetic 
clothes. 

The thing, then, for the poet who would 
say his say in the best possible manner is to 
be sure that it is the best possible manner 
for the particular piece of work under con- 
sideration, to keep the personal self out of 
the work as much as may be. The conscious 
poetic stylist, as the conscious stylist of any 
order, risks losing a great good to obtain a 
lesser benefit. The poetic style cultivated 
for the sake of style will prove as unsatisfac- 
tory, in the long run, as the musical selection 
sacrificing soul for mere technical pyro- 
technics. In poetry, of all arts, the spirit, the 
soul must reign paramount, far above all else. 

And the poet who would be and attain his 
best, who would keep his lyre always in tune 
and in condition to render forth its noblest 
music, must keep his higher nature open to- 
inspirations, to impressions of beauty, of har- 
mony, of good and sympathy and regnant 
right. He must " polish his windows" as- 
siduously, keep them unfailingly "open 



The Indwelling Spirit 97 

toward Jerusalem," in order that no gleam 
of heavenly light, no glimmer of the shining 
stars, the rising sun, the spark divine be lost 
or missed or wasted. He must remember, 
as unfailingly, that " all great art is nothing 
but what, in the long run, continues to please 
many people. " He must keep himself con- 
tinually conversant with the best of all life, 
all literature, in all ways, all manners; he 
must do his untiring, unending best to bring 
out the light that is in him, the noblest with- 
in his power. And at risk of being reminded 
that poetry is a thing apart from morality, 
or-unmorality, as such, it must be suggested 
that the best poetry springs, beyond question, 
from u a clear head and a clean heart," and 
that the greatest of poems mainly have been 
altruistic in tenor. Few really great poems 
have been written by poets of poor moral 
fiber, or by poets who have lived from their 
race apart. 

The poet who would write really great 
poetry, who would solve the crucial problem 
of suiting style to subject, of providing 
proper avenues of expression for the in- 



98 How to Write Poetry 

dwelling spirit of poetry, really must be u in 
tune with the infinite/' in sympathy — or at 
least in sympathetic comprehension — with 
all varieties and variations of life as he 
knows and sees and shares it, in "perfect 
charity with all men/' in the words of the 
good old spiritual mandate, unless, indeed, 
righteous indignation move him to attempt, 
through poetic protestation, the setting 
right of some unquestioned evil or wrong. 

Poets so poetizing, as artists of any kind 
working honestly " for the work's sake," as 
for sake of the best and highest good of all 
humanity, will find many vexed stylic and 
technical problems practically self-solving, 
especially if the general rule be followed of 
choosing the simplest style available when- 
ever choice offers. Styles of many kinds, 
forms of many kinds, the work of many 
poets, must be studied — perhaps tried — for 
purposes of poetic culture; personal produc- 
tions, in every case, must be as finely finished 
as possible. Conscience and intellect are no 
less necessary than soul and emotion in the 
making of real poetry. 



The Indwelling Spirit 99 

But — and this thought is veracious as 
comforting! — if the heart be right, the in- 
dwelling spirit be served in the spirit of pure 
and reverent devotion, the style, .granted 
foundation of the poetic gift in any degree 
worth noting, will take care of itself. 



MARKET 

I went to Market yesterday, 

And it is like a Fair 
Of everything you'd like to see; 

But nothing live is there: 
— The Pigeons, hanging up to eat; 
And Rabbits, by their little feet ! — 

And no one seemed to care. 

And there were Fishes out in rows, 
Bright ones of every kind; 

Some were pink, and silver too; 
But all of them were blind. 

Yes, everything you'd like to touch. - 

It would not make you happy much, 
But no one seemed to mind. 

And loveliest of all, a Deer! — 
Only its eyes were blurred; 

And hanging by it, very near, 
A beautiful great Bird. 



Market 101 

So I could smooth his feathers through, 
And kiss them, very softly, too : 
But Oh, he never stirred! 

— Josephine Preston Peabody. 



CHAPTER V 

THE TRAINING AND EQUIPMENT OF THE 
POET 

THE education of a poet, to generalize 
before getting down to details, should 
be as general and generous as possible. His 
training should be correspondingly thorough 
and should include at least as much pre- 
liminary work and practice time as would 
be deemed necessary by the musician, the 
painter, or any other artist acquiring the ele- 
ments of his profession, his special trade 
technique. The poet's equipment should in- 
clude everything possible save, perhaps, a 
rhyming dictionary and poetic license. Al- 
beit, to joke a little, semi-seriously, the neces- 
sity of acquiring duly numbered and regis- 
tered license, attesting due and proper quali- 
fications, before acquiring right to the public 
practice of poetry would save the world from 
many pathetic inflictions, save many a poetic 
102 



The Training of the Poet 103 

but none the less poignant heartache, save to 
many a poet his prematurely delivered song. 

As to the rhyming dictionary — more 
later! Tools so often being confused with 
production, imitation with creation, the 
rhyming dictionary habit will be more hon- 
ored in the breach than by observance. Its 
support is questionable at best. 

Let us begin, then, so much being ac- 
cepted, with the poet's specific education, his 
special preparation for that station of life 
and literature to which he believes the god 
of poetry has called him. This, as has been 
hinted, should include every possible subject 
and phase and feature and department and 
division of the world's knowledge, experi- 
ence, and attainments. Since he is to be free 
of the world's best company, open to all im- 
aginable influences and opportunities, liable, 
at any moment, any moment's notice, to lack 
power or be the more impressive, effective 
for some seemingly casual hint or idea or 
allusion, the poet should be fit to associate 
with such company, able to respond at will, 
at need, to each and all of the influences 



io 4 How to Write Poetry 

noted. There have been poets, of course, 
who knew little of books or humans, just as 
there have been artists ignorant of pictures 
or even of nature, cooks unable to give chap- 
ter and verse for the recipes basing their 
acknowledged successes. But such cases are 
exceptions, merely — merely, as is the rule 
with regard to exceptions, further impress- 
ing, enforcing the rule. 

Nor should the poet's education be that 
of books only. He should know nature, all 
sister arts in some degree, all fields of science 
in so far as possible, all branches of his 
brother man's endeavor to greatest possible 
extent. He should realize the trend and taste, 
if not the psychology, of all human emotions ; 
he should comprehend them all, subjectively, 
whether of pleasing or repellent order, be 
quick in responsive reaction. Better that 
a poet should be slow of intellect, though this, 
of course, is regrettable, than that he should 
fail to feel. 

And as with the emotional nature, so, too, 
with the moral, the spiritual sides of human 
life and living. Poetry, of course, as all art, 



The Training of the Poet x o5 

is a thing at least technically apart from 
morality, while morality, equally of course, 
largely varies with times and ideas and periods 
and conventions. But, other things being 
equal, the "good" man, the man who strives 
to do and be his best under all circumstances 
and in all conditions, the man who leads a 
moral life according to conventional stand- 
ards, will be the better poet. Again there 
have been exceptions, exceptions of such 
meteor-like brilliance and wonder as to claim 
more than their just and actual value, but, 
yet again, main-traveled experience clearly 
indicates that the high, brave, uplifting emo- 
tions and impulses make for the best in art 
— as in life, which art serves, which it fol- 
lows, and which it should also lead and in- 
spire; that the best, most manly men, the 
best, most womanly women, have been the 
best and most manly, womanly of poets. 
This is true in a double sense, moreover, since 
all true art is asexual in character and must 
combine the nature, virtues, and attributes of 
both halves of the human race. 

The poet, as Bret Harte well expressed it, 



*o6 How to Write Poetry 

u is man and woman and child, all three," 
aye, and all other forms of life over-above 
and into the bargain. Only as the poet is 
"made one with nature," with his brother 
man and, so far as this is humanly possible, 
with the creator of the universe, can he 
properly fulfil his high poetic destiny and 
heritage. Narrow the poet's sympathies, his 
universal comprehension, by the slightest, 
most insignificant iota and his work suffers in 
corresponding ratio and degree. 

Most important of all, the poet must know 
his fellows, must know humanity, must know 
the world, must know life. Young poets, 
once more, have broken this rule, have 
proved superior to it, but only to the scope 
and extent possible to their age and genius; 
and precocious genius seldom wears well, 
while, in regard to the early dying poets who 
in several instances have seemed almost su- 
perhuman in their human understanding, 
potential future growth and development can 
only be conjectured. Generally speaking, 
heart answers to heart, feeling to feeling, 
emotion to experience, imaginary, personal or 



The Training of the Poet 107 

vicarious. For this reason alone, though 
other good reasons might be advanced in im- 
pressive array and number, the poet who se- 
cludes himself, refuses his share of the com- 
mon weal or woe, shuts himself from the 
common tasks, duties, and adventures of 
mankind, seldom sings for the multitude, 
having sadly crippled his gift. 

Tennyson, we know, resolutely walled out 
life's turmoil, but, just as Swinburne's er- 
rotic rhapsodies concerning "the lilies and 
languors of virtue, the roses and raptures 
of vice " scarce will be remembered so long, 
as they surely are not loved so widely, as the 
cool, clear melodic heights attained by Whit- 
tier, Longfellow, Alice Meynell, Sara Teas- 
dale, Josephine Preston Peabody, Edwin 
Arlington Robinson, and many true-visioned 
singers, so Tennyson, in all reasonable prob- 
ability, lost largely through lessened con- 
tact with his fellows. Was not his 
greatest, his unforgettable poem, "In Me- 
moriam," written from the depths and 
heights of his closest touch with passionate 
human emotions, his love and sorrow for his 



x °8 How to Write Poetry 

friend, his comrade, his alter ego } Arthur 
Hallam? Is not the same thing true of 
Shelley's incomparable "Adonais?" Have 
not the poems dearest, most vital to hu- 
manity usually been born of intimate love, 
grief, gladness, been written under stress of 
vivid personal emotion, poured out, warm and 
glowing, from the fervent crucible of the 
heart? 

So let it be said once more, with fervent 
emphasis, that the poet prospective does not 
well or wisely if he shun contact with the 
world, the fullest stream of life, the closest 
contact with his human fellows. "The core 
of reality is poetry," says James Huneker, 
pointing a great and double truth, speaking 
of the poet-musician, Debussy. "He lived 
not at the circumference but at the hub of 
things. He loathed the academic." 

And Percy MacKaye, recalling, it may be, 
the brave old days when every educated man 
wrote verse as naturally as is the case in 
Japan at present, when Pliny the younger 
deprecated the growing tendency of his 
poetic friends (not so different, it would 



The Training of the Poet *°9 

seem, from their modern fraternity brothers 
of some two thousand years later!) to com- 
pel him to listen to personal reading of their 
poems, feels that contemporary poets lose 
much by their failure to sing in unison, to 
"get together." 

Poets, he says, have remained hermits " in 
a time the most cooperative the earth has 
ever known. In so choral an age, shall the 
poets," he asks, "still remain solitary 
pipers?" 

Mr. MacKaye's contention, in passing, 
gains in strength by comparison "with the 
habits of nature's superlative singers, the un- 
tutored, unapproachable minstrels of the 
woods and fields. The nightingale, the 
thrush, the blackbird sing their sweetest in 
the midst of their ordinary environment, the 
thick of everyday living. The lark rises, 
truly, but he rises from the thronging center 
of his special world. 

The birds, however — again in passing,- — 
take their practice-training in private, seldom 
venturing more than a few fugitive, piping 
notes in the open until the gifts of song, as 



II( ^ How to Write Poetry 

of life, have been fully conferred upon them. 
The analogy is worth noting. The poet 
prospective does neither well nor wisely if 
he attempt to write too freely, at all events 
to publish, before he has had time to live. 

For specific training, aside from general 
education, the poet needs all — and more — 
than any other artist in the way of technical 
and super-technical enrichment. In regard 
to no other art, perhaps, is it so absolutely, 
imperatively necessary that the art be easy, 
natural, seemingly unconscious and instinc- 
tive. The singer, the sculptor, the painter, 
the actor, all these, with superior opportuni- 
ties for softening mistakes, shadowing weak 
spots or drawing attention from mistakes and 
failures, expect to study and work for long 
periods before daring the test of the public 
square, braving the judgment of their peers, 
expecting fame's guerdon. Why should the 
poet alone expect to spring to success full- 
fledged, like Minerva from the train of Jove? 
Why should the poet, essaying his 'prentice 
flights in the heavens of song, be wounded, 
disappointed, discouraged not to receive im- 



The Training of the Poet m 

mediate return, recognition any more than 
should any other budding artist? Why 
should he expect a dispassionate, disinterested 
public to take palliative account of his youth, 
his inexperience, his artistic limitations and 
longings? If the poet, if any artist, pro- 
duce a bit of perfect work without long 
and soul-searching if joyous striving, so much 
the better. The day of miracles is by no 
means over. The high gods of artistic crea- 
tion are passing good to their votaries, some- 
times. But — the high gods are not always 
in evidence. Miracles do not happen every 
hour. 

Were the poet prospective trained to apply 
to his burgeoning art the basic principles ap- 
plied by other artists, the " disappointments 
of literature," the pangs of poetic disillusion 
would be few r er, less heart-rending, even in 
these splendid days of poets on every corner, 
with a new one every hour. 

The poet prospective, having made all 
possible technical preparation, familiarized 
himself with the work of poetic masters, 
with the various verse forms, with the mys- 



ii2 How to Write Poetry 

teries of meter, stress, accent, and so on, 
should then enter upon his practice period — 
enter upon it in all humility and sweet-spirited 
devotion. It is assumed that nobody, even 
in the present day and generation of poetic 
popularity, not to say notoriety, is so temera- 
rious as to dream of living by poetic produc- 
tion. It is also assumed, concomitantly, that 
every poet of the future takes reasonable care 
to provide himself with means of present 
subsistence. Such course, indubitably, is that 
of sagacity and prudence. Then let the poet 
prospective, while earning his daily bread in 
some more immediately lucrative manner, de- 
vote to his growing art the precious fruits 
and period of his leisure, keeping abreast, 
meanwhile, of all that his fellow-poets 
farther along the bright, steep road to 
Olympus may be doing. If, now and then, 
he be lucky enough to sell a bit of verse, a 
poem, let him be glad and rejoice greatly, be 
stimulated, as only success can stimulate, to 
further endeavor. But he need not expect to 
do this too often, nor, indeed, should he try. 
A fair part of the poet's preparation — 



The Training of the Poet ll 3 

speaking of the work of his fellows — may 
well consist of more or less frequent con- 
versations with other climbing poets, of the 
eager, ardent talk about poetry and things 
allied that youth, that artists love so dearly. 
Out of such communion much good has 
grown and more will grow, in poetic as in 
personal connection. We may yet enjoy the 
community poetizing, presumably something 
like community singing, that Mr. MacKaye 
has suggested. Good craft talk must be of 
benefit to the talkers, always. But let the 
talk be honest, not of " Work spelled with a 
large W and performed with a small one," 
as a clever critic recently suggested a similar 
situation. And let the talkers shun, as they 
would the plague — or fear of plagiarism — 
all hint of professional superiority or exclu- 
sion. The time has gone by for the relega- 
tion of the most human, as the highest, of 
arts to the cloistered study or the lonely 
studio or attic. Poets, to fulfil their right 
and manifest mission, must be one with those 
for whom they would sing and serve. 

For purely technical reasons it is assumed 



XI 4 How to Write Poetry 

that the poet prospective will seek to know 
all possible about his chosen tools and an- 
gels, will study with deep-seated love and rev- 
erence those wonderful symbols, the words 
which will so fitly, exquisitely express his 
every thought and shade of meaning; that he 
will strive, as much by the constant reading 
and assimilation of great poetry and good 
prose as by more direct personal effort, to 
enlarge his vocabulary and enrich his own 
flow of language, ideas, and imagination. 
This study of words, in itself a never-ending 
joy and pleasure, must never be forgotten, 
neglected if the poet, prospective or actual, 
would keep his tool-box well supplied, his 
implements in good working order. But let 
him never forget that the words are tools, 
mainly, NOT mere decorative jewels, and 
that they are to be used and treated as such. 
Which brings us, again, by logical se- 
quence, to the vexed and burning questions of 
the rhyming dictionary and poetic license. 
And here the poetic adviser, mindful of the 
hydra-headed lions guarding the path in all 
directions, would tip her words with fire. 



The Training of the Poet IJ 5 

Poetic license, so called, may be expunged 
from the discussion without hesitation or 
quarter. It belongs, if, indeed, it can claim 
most shadowy right to existence, to the realm 
of genius, genius which occasionally can af- 
ford to take liberties and play havoc with 
poetic proprieties in manner quite inexcusa- 
ble to others and hardly to be excused, in 
some instances, to the greatest of the great 
ones. Poetic license never yet made a 
great poet greater, and it frequently is to be 
regretted that men and women of acknowl- 
edged genius should pay so little heed, upon 
occasion, to the apt if incomplete definition 
of their God-given endowment which de- 
scribes it as "the taking of infinite pains." 

Making all due allowance for other poetic 
aspects and features, it is certain that the 
poets who have taken infinite pains in regard 
to the polishing of their poems — and these 
have been more numerous than, perhaps, is 
generally suspected, especially in regard to 
those poets whose works read most smoothly 
and spontaneously — have the strongest hold 
upon everlasting fame. 



IX 6 How to Write Poetry 

For the rhyming dictionary — its use 
should be restricted to those who will prom- 
ise never to use it. As with the stimulant 
Theodore Roosevelt ceased to take upon his 
exploration trips because " I learned that the 
emergencies for which it was provided never 
happened," while for all ordinary occasions 
hot tea proved better, the emergencies in 
which a rhyming dictionary might seem in- 
dispensable are the very ones in which it is 
most especially and peculiarly unsafe to de- 
pend upon its aid. Sense and soul must 
always take precedence of melody and rhyme 
and rhythm, and when a rhyme must be 
wrung, willy-nilly, from the secret store of 
the rhyming dictionary it is almost inevitable 
that soul and sense must suffer. It would be 
asking too much of mere human probabilities 
to expect aught else. 

The use of the rhyming dictionary, more- 
over, has betrayed into inexcusable, some- 
times ridiculous rhymes and near-rhymes 
many a foolish, indolent, weary or too trust- 
ing poet. And the fact that a false or fool- 
ish rhyme may be truthfully attributed to 



The Training of the Poet lI 7 

Browning or other ranking poet is nothing 
in its favor — or his. 

Better, far better, abandon the most al- 
luring of lines than force into existence a 
rhyme which has no real reason for being. 
For — and this brings us close to the most 
important thing that can be said or thought 
in regard to the writing of poetry, the crux 
and climax of the entire poetry-writing sub- 
ject — the way of saying a thing matters so 
much less than the thing to be said. 

Now, indeed, comes the indubitable mo- 
ment for capitals, capitals which should be 
shaped of flashing fire. THE ONE IN- 
DISPENSABLE FACTOR OF POETRY) 
WRITING, THE MAKING OF A 
POEM, IS THE HAVING SOME- 
THING TO SAY! 

A knack at versification, to say nothing of 
the easy writing of free verse, is common 
enough at present. Graceful lines and com- 
binations of lines are superabundant among 
us ; almost anyone can so manipulate words 
and sentences as to more or less distantly and 
distinctly resemble poetry. Of good poetic 



n8 How to Write Poetry 

ability, talent, as of good poetic style and 
manner, the English speaking world surely 
lacks little. But — the poetic knack is not 
all 

" So many of our writers are able to string 
pretty words and lines together," thus, 
thoughtfully, a well-read man professionally 
conversant with the ever growing literature 
of the period, "but so many of them seem 
to be intellectually empty and dry." 

Here, then, is the veriest inmost heart of 
the inmost poetic kernel. Have something 
to say! 

English classes, study, practice, the gift 
of imitation, a trick of piquant or graceful 
expression, these will teach one how to com- 
pose lines and poem forms classically per- 
fect, perhaps even emotionally attractive, to 
turn out fairly deceptive simulacra of poetic 
productions. The public may be induced to 
read, and even praise them. In some cases a 
more or less meretricious reputation may fol- 
low. But just as the sculptor who carves, the 
artist who paints, the singer who carols most 
brilliantly, may leave the hearer, the spec- 



The Training of the Poet 119 

tator untouched of inner uplifting, so the poet 
who fails of real message has but won craft 
or technical glory, appealed to the reader, the 
hearer, on mere mechanical ground. 

The secret of the divine spark has not yet 
been made known to humanity. No child of 
man yet has learned how to breathe the 
breath of life into another. And while such 
prerogative remains the prerogative of the 
Almighty only the writing of real poetry, 
true poetry, can neither be taught nor learned 
save only to and by those to whom has been 
granted at least a touch of the divine afflatus, 

Granted a poet's inborn, God-given mes- 
sage to his fellows, his God-given power of 
verbal music and singing, it is possible to 
extend real help in the way of assisting the 
said poet to acquire necessary basis of tech- 
nical knowledge, necessary background and 
perspective, ease, grace, and vigor of expres- 
sion. Practice makes perfect in poetry as in 
any other form of art endeavor. But it is 
not yet possible to endow the poet with the 
justifying message, to provide him with ma- 
terial out of which true poems can be made. 



I2 ° How to Write Poetry 

Practice poetry all you will or may, in- 
dulge in all the poetic craft-work you desire 
and can find time for, but never imagine that 
you are writing poetry unless the poem insists 
upon being written, the song, at least in the 
beginning, insists upon singing itself . Work, 
finish, polish, all these are necessary, as a 
rule, when the poem, the song has taken unto 
itself preliminary form and shaping, but there 
must be a foundation upon which to labor. 
It is not, humanly speaking, possible to dig 
or draw from one's mental stores, one's in- 
ner consciousness, a plan for a poem as one 
draws from one's intellectual or material 
files plot or material for a short story, a 
novel. The thing must be there to begin 
with. The nucleus of the true poem, the real 
poem, must be found, not made. 

And when is posited the question: "What 
shall I write about?" the answer, if this 
question be asked in poetic connection, is in- 
evitable. It must be, if honestly delivered : 

u Wait until the writing impulse makes it- 
self evident. Until you know what to write 
about, don't write at all." 



WINDOW-WISHING 

Oh yes, we get off regular 

By half past six, 

And six on Saturdays. 

Sister an' I go marketing on Saturday nights, 

Everything's down. 

Besides there's Sunday comin'; 

You can sleep, 

Oh my, how you can sleep ! 

No mother shakin' you 

To u get up now," 

No coffee smell 

Hurryin' you while you dress, 

No Beauty Shop to get to on the tick of the 

minute 
Or pony up a fine. 
Sister an' I go window-wishin' 
Sunday afternoon, all over the Loop. 
It's lots of fun. 
First she'll choose what she thinks is the 

prettiest 
Then my turn comes. 

121 



122 How to Write Poetry 

You mustn't ever choose a thing 

The other's lookin' at, 

And when a window's done 

The one that beats 

Can choose the first time when we start the 

next. 
The hats are hardest 
'Specially when they're turnin' round and 

round. 
But window-wishin's great! 

Then there's the pictures, 

Bully ones sometimes, 

Sometimes they're queer. 

Sister an' I go in 'most every Sunday. 

We took Mother 'long last week, 

But she didn't like 'em any too well. 

Mother's old, you know, 

We have to kinda humor her. 

Next day she couldn't remember a single 

thing 
But the lions on the steps. 

You know what happened the other night? 
Sister an' I didn't know just what to do, — 



Window-Wishing 123 

A gentleman came to see us. 

He said Jim asked him to 

Sometime when he was near. 

Jim's my brother, you know. 

He lives down state. 

We have to send him part of our wages 

regular, 
Sister an' I ; 

He doesn't seem to get a steady place, 
An' Mother likes us to. 
She's dotty on Jim. 
Sometimes I get real nasty — 
A great big man like that! 

Anyway his friend came walkin' in 

An' said Jim sent his love. 

Sister an' I didn't exactly know what to do, 

And Mother looked so queer! 

Her dress was awful dirty. 

He said he was livin' in Chicago, 

And Sister said she hoped 

He had a place he liked. 

He only stayed a little while, 

Till half past eight, 

And then he took his hat 



1^4 How to Write Poetry 

From under the chair he was sittin' on 
And went away. 

I said just now it happened the other night, 
But it was seven weeks ago last Friday 

evening. 
He said he'd come again. 
I dunno as he will, 
Sister an' I keep wonderin'. 
We dressed up every night for quite a 

while 
An' stayed in Sundays. 
Yesterday we thought 
We'd go down window-wishin' 
And what do you think? 
Just as she'd picked a lovely silver dress 
Sister jerked my arm, 
Then all of a sudden there she was 
Cryin' an' sniffin' in her handkerchief 
Standin' there on the sidewalk, 
And what do you think she said? 
" I'd like to kill the woman that wears that 

gown ! " 
I tell you I was scared, 
She looked so queer, 
But she's all right today. 



Window-Wishing 125 

Oh thank you, two o'clock next Saturday the 

tenth? 
I'll put it down, 

A shampoo and a wave, you said? 
I'll keep the time, 
Good morning, 

— Mary Aldis. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE POET'S SERVICE 

MUCH is heard and read, in these 
thoughtful days of humanity's quick- 
ened sense of mutual responsibility, of "so- 
cial service," u the humanitarian impulse," 
of " duty to one's fellow-man," et cetera. We 
have learned, of late, how each of us affects 
and influences the other, whether or no we 
will to do so. Not so much is said of the 
poet, in this connection, as of more obvious 
social workers. Yet humanity certainly 
owes, and in all ages and periods of the 
world's development has owed, the poets 
great debt and service. 

"Let me make the songs of a nation and I 
care not who makes its laws " is a wise saying. 
For man does not live by bread alone, and 
that which inspires, pleases, quickens, thrills, 
will have far more effect upon him, at least 

126 



The Poet's Service 127 

more lasting effect upon him, than that which 
merely regulates his behavior, keeps him in 
the straight and narrow way. 

Poets always have inspired men, groups, 
nations to great efforts. The surprise too 
commonly manifested during the Great War 
that the poets should, in such large numbers, 
be soldiers, the soldiers in such large num- 
bers poets, was gratuitous and uncalled for. 
Soldiers always have been singers, ever 
since the world's earliest recorded conflicts. 
Always the minstrel has rushed into battle, 
yearning, perhaps, for the poignant thrill so 
grateful to his eager nature, swift to seek, to 
render poetic justice, to right another's 
wrong. And always the minstrel, the poet, 
has stirred to martial action those of his fel- 
low-citizens less articulate, less eloquent, less 
gifted in the w r ay of song. 

The Great War, however, brought home 
to moderns in a way otherwise impossible 
the marked influence of the poet on his time 
and his companions. "The poets were not 
fooled," as well says a contemporary writer, 
and the blame as well as the mighty issues 



1^8 How to Write Poetry 

of the Great War lay clear before their un- 
clouded and prophetic vision. French, Eng- 
lish, Belgian, Italian, Canadian, Australian, 
American, they were as one in trumpeting 
the high, proud necessity of standing by the 
right, in foretelling the downfall of the lords 
of horror, the dawn of earth's day of uni- 
versal freedom. In the darkest hours of the 
hideous war-night the poets glimpsed before 
them the promise of coming peace and glory. 
Who can judge, measure, overestimate the 
power for good of those brave and splendid 
souls who, themselves hastening unselfishly 
into danger, from the beginning of hostili- 
ties, the first grim presage, sang in such 
brave and splendid chorus? 

Who can judge, measure, overestimate the 
power for good of such poems as Brooke's 
"The Soldier," Seeger's "I Have a Ren- 
dezvous with Death," McCrae's " In Flan- 
ders' Fields," Kilmer's " Rouge Bouquet," 
the rich and inspiring music of Jean Botrel 
and Emile Verhaeren and each and every 
member of the Allies' glorious army of mili- 
tary singers ? Who can judge, measure, over- 



The Poet's Service l ^9 

estimate the patriotic, humanitarian service 
rendered by such simpler bards as Robert 
W. Service and the brave American woman 
who wrote the words for u Keep the Home 
Fires Burning," and whose life was sacrificed 
in one of the earliest London raids? Those 
homely, tender lines, like the nobler but 
scarcely more beloved " Battle Hymn of the 
Republic," probably made more soldiers, 
more real soldiers, fighting men enthusiastic 
and ardent, than all the draft regulations and 
patriotic speeches that the war could bring 
to be. 

The stay-at-home soldiers, they who from 
the duty lines of ordinary life and living 
supported their brothers in uniform, these 
also gained much by and from the brave 
singing of the war poets, in and out of khaki, 
nor have they — the noncombatants and the 
women — acquitted themselves ignobly in 
poetic regard. The quality of the newer 
war poetry, moreover, has been of high order. 
Praise of war, as war, talk of the glory of 
war, as war, have been conspicuously absent, 
as conspicuously absent as the gold lace long 



*3° How to Write Poetry 

so resplendent upon soldierly uniforms; we 
know war, now, for the grim and awful 
thing it is, we make no attempt to soften 
its terrors or uplift its degrading effect and 
influence. The poets, always in advance of 
the common run in sensing, interpreting na- 
tional and spiritual values, from the begin- 
ning of the recent upheaval have left unsung 
war's long honored glories, told the ugly 
truth about it. They have even dared to 
interpret to and for us the terrible war fears 
always, heretofore, shrouded in tacit repres- 
sion, treated as mean, cowardly, construc- 
tively nonexistent. This honesty and insight, 
notable from the first ringing calls to courage 
and strong action to the latest rejoicing over 
the cessation of conflict, have resulted in an 
entirely new kind of poetry, strange, tender, 
deeply thoughtful and deeply true. 

"The poet," as Gerald Chittenden justly 
says, is "in his proper office, a prophet, an 
interpreter of racial emotions, and poetry is 
a still pool, reflecting the ambitions and 
despairs, the admirations and the contempts 
of mankind." The attitude of mankind to- 



The Poet's Service 131 

ward war and its results having undergone 
marked transformation, the poetry of the 
Great War has been similarly transformed. 

And the poets, first to see the truth in 
regard to battle, likewise were first to see 
the forecasting shadow of the Great Peace 
still scarcely dreamed of in the marketplaces 
of humanity. "Our poets," says Chittenden 
again, "have become in a true sense our 
prophets ; they have not only dreamed of 
the i parliament of man, the federation of 
the world,' but have cleared from our path 
the first and heaviest obstacles that lay in the 
way of its achievement." And not the least 
of the social services rendered by the " essen- 
tial war industry" of poetry making has been 
that of bringing home to war-worn humanity 
the truth that human beings still are broth- 
ers, that, no matter how torn and tattered 
the cloud-drapings of universal fraternity, 
international fellowship, in its heart of hearts 
humanity still and always is and will be as 
one. 

And not in war alone do the poets prove 
their superlative value to their fellows, their 



132 How to Write Poetry 

high calling as evangelists and apostles of 
the truest good. When have they not exalted 
the world and its children by inspiring to 
just and proud and unselfish and noble 
endeavors? Setting aside their uplifting 
inspiration of pure beauty, as earlier and 
always gratefully acknowledged, what need, 
what yearning, what aspiration of striving 
mankind have they not fathered and 
furthered and served? 

Take, for example, the cause of too long 
neglected labor. From poetic support and 
recognition what has it not gained? 

"But no sound of trump of angel 
Brings the slave his glad evangel" 

sang Longfellow, himself by his sympathetic 
poem doing much to sound for the enslaved 
the " glad evangel " of fast-coming freedom. 
" Do ye hear the children weeping, O my 
brothers?" so Elizabeth Barrett Browning 
voiced the sick heartache shortly proving so 
potent to help the little, toiling creatures 
who pulled so poignantly at her heart-strings. 



The Poet's Service 133 

Florence Wilkinson in u The Factory Flow- 
er " composed a later and equally unforgetta- 
ble indictment of certain forms of child la- 
bor. Who could read this indictment un- 
moved? 

Lisabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina, 
They are winding stems of roses, one by one, 

one by one, 
Little children who have never learned to 

play; 
Teresina softly crying that her fingers ache 

today ; 
Tiny Fiametta nodding when the twilight 

slips in, gray. 
High above the clattering street, ambulance 

and fire-gong beat, 
They sit, curling crimson petals, one by one, 

one by one. 

Lisabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina, 
They have never seen a rosebush nor a dew- 
drop in the sun. 
They will dream of the vendetta, Teresina, 
Fiametta, 



*34 How to Write Poetry 

Of a Black Hand and a face behind a grat- 
ing ; 

They will dream of cotton petals, endless, 
crimson, suffocating, 

Never of a wild-rose thicket nor the singing 
of a cricket, 

But the ambulance will bellow through the 
wanness of their dreams, 

And their tired lids will flutter with the 
street's hysteric screams. 

Lisabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina, 
They are winding stems of roses, one by one, 

one by one. 
Let them have a long, long playtime, Lord 

of toil, when toil is done, 
Fill their baby hands with roses, joyous roses 

of the sun! 

Louis Untermeyer, in " Caliban in the 
Coal Mines," has produced a labor-plea as 
haunting, soul-searching as Lucy Larcom's 
" Hannah's at the Window, Binding Shoes," 
or Margaret Widdemer's "The Factories." 
Consider the simple, terrible strength of 



The Poet's Service 135 

" Caliban in the Coal Mines," its stark na- 
kedness of bitter, arraigning truth. 

God, we don't like to complain, 

We know that the mine is no lark — 

But — there's the pools from the rain; 
But — there's the cold and the dark. 

God, You don't know what it is— ^ 
You, in Your well-lighted sky, 

Watching the meteors whizz; 
Warm, with the sun always by. 

God, if You had but the moon 
Stuck in Your cap for a lamp, 

Even You'd tire of it soon, 

Down in the dark and the damp. 

Nothing but blackness above, 

And nothing that moves but the 
cars — 
God, if You wish for our love, 

Fling us a handful of stars! 

Margaret Widdemer, again, in "Tere- 
sina's Face" sounds a tocsin none the less 



136 How to Write Poetry 

harrowingly impressive for the surging un- 
dercurrent of human tenderness and emotion 
that leaves the reader's heart bleeding, the 
eyes moist, the soul shivering and sick. No- 
body, reading this pulsing human document, 
ever again could think lightly of the sore 
trials and troubles of sundry innocent, per- 
plexed and exploited " strangers within our 
gates." 

He saw it last of all before they herded in 

the steerage, 
Dark against the sunset where he lingered 

by the hold, 
The tear-stained, dusk-rose face of her, the 

little Teresina 
Sailing out to lands of gold. 

Ah, his days were long, long days, still toil- 
ing in the vineyard, 

Working for the gold to set him free to go 
to her, 

Where gay there glowed the flower-face of 
little Teresina, 

Where all joy and riches were: 



The Poet's Service 137 

Hard to find one rose-face where the dark 
rose-faces cluster, 

Where the outland laws are strange and out- 
land voices hum — 

Only one lad's hoping, and the word of 
Teresina, 

Who would wait for him to come : 



God grant he may not find her, since he may 

not win her freedom, 
Nor yet be great enough to love in such 

marred, captive guise 
The patient, painted face of her, the little 

Teresina, 
With its cowed, all-knowing eyes! 

"Window-Wishing," the Mary Aldis 
poem appearing elsewhere in this volume, is 
another keenly telling member of the glori- 
ous galaxy of poems that, serving truth 
through love and beauty, life through sym- 
pathetic interpretation, have helped, are 
helping to remake and reform the world. ' 



l 3$ How to Write Poetry 

The same proud claim applies in all known 
poetic directions. Are not the poets, one 
and all, in their several manners now calling 
the world to a truer conception of human 
rights, of social progress, of freedom, just 
as they have called in all times and ages, 
from Homer down to Kilmer — Kilmer who, 
like so many of his brother soldier-poets, 
gave his life joyously to the cause of right 
as he had given his heart before it; from 
Byron, burning to set Greece free, to Led- 
widge, dying in behalf of outraged Belgium, 
the poet-soul always has thrilled and re- 
sponded to this noblest of natural impulses 
and passions. Without the poets, the sol- 
diers might have fought in vain in behalf of 
all these causes. For a cold and intellectual 
conception of right and wrong moves rto 
man to fight for sake of his suffering fellows. 
The sword, mainly, is helpless lacking the 
song. 

Religion — now, as poetry itself, brought 
closer to human life, more intimately inter- 
mingled with the thought of the people than 
at any time since the medieval era; justice, 



The Poet's Service 139 

love of God, of man, of country; courage, 
tenderness, power of altruistic self-giving, 
where would these be, where would they 
have been in all the history of mankind with- 
out the devotion, the inspiration of the poets, 
the poets who, whatever may be said, sug- 
gested to the contrary, never are remote 
from the throbbing heart of humanity, but 
always near, akin to its keenest needs, 
its most eager desires and hungers and 
emotions? The Biblical poets, the poets 
of Old Rome, of Greece, of all the an- 
cient peoples and races and civiliza- 
tions, out of the fullness of their life and 
love and worship sang in unforgettable 
strains and measures. A mighty choir of 
lesser voices, now piping, now whispering, 
now diapason-deep and glorious, has fol- 
lowed them, rings on always, always urging, 
inspiring men and women to greater, more 
unselfish efforts and endeavors. Beauty, in 
all its forms, has been served by similar 
sweet and majestic chorus; goodness, nobil- 
ity, whole-souled devotion to truth and light 
and sweetness and holy living, been fed by 



140 How to Write Poetry 

the same high-hearted and wonderful al- 
legiance. Motherhood glory, greatness, in- 
nocence, the love of little children, all these 
have received pure and transfiguring acco- 
lade at the hands of the poets. Love — 
what poet has not sung beautifully of the 
wondrous grace of love? 

Examples, love lyrics without number 
might be given, as, indeed, examples of all 
the other branches and fields of the poets' 
rare and magnificent social service. No hu- 
man thought, feeling, or need has been left 
untouched of their magic halo. But out of 
such wealth and multiplicity of splendor how 
choose, with anything like clarity or justice, 
for single reproduction, how make an end of 
quotation, quotation once allowed to begin? 
Let us, rather, be content to point the way 
to the lovers' lanes, the hearts' highways hal- 
lowed by all the singers of all the ages, then 
allow the student of poetry, following the 
guidepost's loving indication, to find and joy 
in these hallowed lanes and highways, these 
glad poetic byways, by himself. 

Tolstoy, justly or unjustly, has been 



The Poet's Service Hi 

quoted as saying that nothing was ever said 
in poetry which could not be better said in 
plain prose ; and Tolstoy, himself in his own 
way a true poet, must be listened to with 
respect upon all occasions. But in this par- 
ticular connection truth probably lies rather 
with Max Eastman, who believes that " From 
the standpoint of one who wishes to experi- 
ence the intrinsic nature of a thing spoken of, 
it is entirely true that nothing was ever said 
in plain language which could not be better 
said in poetry." Witness, it may be, the un- 
counted lovers who, brimming with lyric 
emotions have enlisted the aid of their fa- 
vorite poet so to express this lyric emotion as 
to awaken swiftest, deepest response from 
the breast of the only maid. 

Here, surely, paying no heed to the many 
other ways and moods in which children of 
men have been served by the poets, are 
reasons enough why every child of man 
may rejoice to feel the poetic impulse stirring 
within him, answers enough to the earlier 
propounded query of " Why Write Poetry ? " 
For if he who makes two blades of grass 



142 How to Write Poetry 

grow where but one previously flourished de- 
serves well at the hands and hearts of his 
fellows, surely he who brings to bloom a 
high thought, a noble desire, a sweet emo- 
tion, a glad aspiration, deserves much and 
far more. 

It is the poets who keep alive in the world 
the things and attributes and attitudes best 
worth preserving. It is the poets who re- 
mind us, recurrently, of the superiority of 
sunlight to gold, moonlight and starshine to 
silver, music to the shouting of the multi- 
tude, love to the comradeship of monarchs, 
calm friendship to the adoration of the 
crowd. 

It is the poets, too, who teach us to wor 
ship pure beauty and goodness, who help us, 
from time to time, to readjust our moral 
standards in harmony with the Eternal Veri- 
ties, and who, despite their much speaking 
as to the unmoral nature of artistic effort, not 
to say the silly chattering of the novelty seek- 
ing mob anent the occasional immorality of 
poets, usually have been conscious of and* 
lived up to their high calling and estate. 



The Poet's Service H3 

Most poets worthy the name have well 
served humanity in the spiritual connection, 
have done nobly in the matter of the spiritual 
teaching of their fellows. They have sung 
strongly and splendidly and sweetly because, 
in the language of one of their most beloved 
members, their hearts in the main have been 
pure. 

Thus to serve humanity, if only in slightest 
measure, in the most rearward ranks of the 
singing army, is to be made free of the great- 
est company of living and translated saints 
and minstrels and heroes. It is to be one 
with all the harmonic powers of the universe, 
from the chirping cricket to the singing star- 
constellations. It is to be part of the secret 
core of every human being, young or older, 
proud and humble, great and small. It is 
to be ever youthful and pristine and spring- 
like because in tune with all the pristine, 
springing life and youth of the world. 

Is it not worth while, O poet prospective 
and poetic questioner, to be, even in thought 
and aspiration and impulse, part of a band, 
a company so fine ? 



TO A RIVER GOD 

There is a river flowing, 

Fast flowing toward the sea ; 

Past bluff and levee blowing, 
His mantle glances free; 

Past pine and corn and cotton-field 
His foam-winged sandals flee. 

From dock and dune and reedy brake, 
Through lock and basin wide, 

Long-linked lagoon and terraced lake 
Drop down to watch his pride, 

And rivers North and rivers South 
To speed his coursing ride. 

Wheat and corn, and corn and wheat, 

Cotton-drift and cane, 
Serried lances rippling fleet, 

Dappled tides of grain, 
Dip beside him where he goes 

Flying to the main. 

144 



To a River God H5 

By full-sown fields and fallow, 

By furrows green and bluff, 
Past bar and rock-bound shallow, 

His torrent washes gruff. 
By tamarack and mallow, 

Past bottom-land and bluff. 

From highland and from lowland, 

Farm, town, and city see 
His foam-winged footsteps going, - 

His mantle blowing free, 
Past dusky mart and black-spired crown, 

Fast flowing to the sea. 

Wheat and corn, and corn and wheat, 

Cotton-drift and cane, 
Serried lances rippling fleet, 

Dappled tides of grain, 
Dip beside him where he goes 

Speeding to the main. 

His foot runs on the ages' bed 

Of gullied cave and rock, 
With bison skull and arrowhead 

His yellow waters lock, 



x 46 How to Write Poetry 

Past vanished trails and tribal dead 
His fleecing currents flock. 

By bluff and levee blowing, 

By oats and rye unshorn, 
His silver mantle flowing, 

Flicks east and west untorn, 
Unfurling from Itasca to 

Louisiana's horn. 

Wheat and corn, and corn and wheat, 

Cotton-drift and cane, 
Serried lances ripping fleet, 

Dappled tides of grain, 
Dip beside him where he goes 

Rushing to the main. 

What tribute, racing spirit, 
What token will you take, 

Through stain and desecration, 
Past town and terraced lake, 

To distant sea and nation 

From cotton, corn, and brake? 

What tribute are you bearing 
Past plain and pluming tree, 



To a River God 147 

By bluff and levee faring 

On foam-winged footsteps free — 
What beauty for the hold of time, 

And souls unborn, to see? 

Poplar on the Northern steep, 

Cotton-drift and cane, 
Wheat and corn, and corn and wheat, 

Rippled tides of grain, 
Brake and bayou ask of you 

Buoyed toward the main* 

By rock and cavern blowing, 
Flocked field and pluming tree, 

Past bluff and levee going 

On foam-winged footsteps free, 

By rapid, lock, and terraced lake, 
Forever to the sea. 

— Edith Franklin Wyatt. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER 

HERE, then, for the benefit of those 
who have read thus far, is the sum- 
ming up of the story. Briefed, the substance 
of the foregoing chapters may be presented 
something like this : 

First. Why Write Poetry? Well, why 
shouldn't you? The writing of poetry, the 
attempt to write poetry, will injure nobody 
and may give somebody — perhaps many 
somebodies — pleasure. And the mental 
and spiritual attitudes normally most con- 
ducive to good poetry certainly will be bene- 
ficial to the writer. Besides, the writing of 
poetry, since it develops artistic perception, 
is the best possible preparation for the fuller 
enjoyment of life, as for writing, enjoyment, 
appreciation of fine prose. 

Secondly. We Must Have a Skeleton. 
Correct anatomical structure, a good skele- 
148 



Conclusion of the Whole Matter H9 

ton, adequate and fitting framework, is as 
necessary to a good poem as a well-har- 
monized physical system, a good skeleton, 
adequate frame is to the efficient human 
body. For this reason the foundation facts 
of poetic construction — stress, meter, accent, 
rhythm, rhyme and so on — must first re- 
ceive proper attention if the finished prod- 
uct is to be of worth-while nature. But 
technical analysis of these foundation facts 
is but lightly considered, in present connec- 
tion, since it is assumed that every poetic 
aspirant in the very beginning of his ambi- 
tion acquires at least working facility and 
familiarity with prosodic preliminaries. The 
purpose of this modest work is as far re- 
moved from poetic dissection or vivisection 
as from production of a poetic corset. " Pay 
much attention to your attire in the dress- 
ing-room, none at all in the drawing-room " 
is a sartorial rule that might well be adapted 
to the writing of poetry. All the tasks of 
elementary education, technical as general, 
should have been accomplished before the 
would-be poet sits him down to poetic com- 



*5o How to Write Poetry 

position. And How to Write Poetry, while 
offering ardent first aid to the poetically 
eager, in no sense invades the realm of pure- 
ly technical work. 

Thirdly. The Clothing Substance. After 
the framework the covering, after the 
skeleton the smooth, graceful, rugged, or 
classic garment of flesh or form. Over firm 
and fitting bony structure, Nature drapes the 
mantle of softening, sweetly tinted tissues 
that utterly transform, transfigure it to 
higher loveliness and uses. As naturally, 
harmonious verbal garbing follows creation, 
production of a basal poetic idea or struc- 
ture. The poet prospective, again it is as- 
sumed, is conversant with the simpler, bet- 
ter-known verse forms, but examples of a 
few of the less usual are given, for the sake 
of convenient reference and because wide 
and widely varied poetic practice, experi- 
ment — but not, necessarily, publication — is 
advised. 

Fourthly. The Indwelling Spirit. Suit 
style to subject, poetic form to poetic fancy, 
fact, or message. Sometimes study im- 



Conclusion of the Whole Matter 151 

proves poetic form fitting, may even be neces- 
sary to determine which of the many avail- 
able poetic shapes is best suited to the poetic 
idea still in more or less fluid condition. But 
art, even the art that conceals art, always 
should be subordinated to spirit, inspiration, 
in such juncture; the best possible form for 
a given poem is that which seems most nat- 
ural, inevitable, which most nearly insists 
upon being. The most magical of " make- 
up artists" never can approach the exquisite 
and haunting wonder of the beauty innocent 
of all artificial assistance. Other things 
being equal, the simplest form is best and 
most pleasing. And the poet whose gift by 
slightest hairbreadth falls short of genius 
should never, nevzr, never, NEVER at- 
tempt the creation of new forms, the varia- 
tion of those acknowledged standard, well 
recognized, well known. 

Fifthly. Poetic Equipment. Preliminary 
and contemporary and progressive and never- 
ending education of the poet should in- 
clude all possible scope and variety and de- 
velopment and form of knowledge. Espe- 



J 52 How to Write Poetry 

cially should it embrace study of that most 
marvelous of all symbols, the word, spoken 
and written, of vocabulary, diction, and 
kindred subjects. Most imperatively should 
it comprehend deep and wide acquaintance 
with life, as actual, varied living. It should 
be richer for the highest ethical atmosphere 
and altitude in which the ego is capable of 
existing. It should NO T include a rhyming 
dictionary, poets being merely human and 
therefore humanly prone to temptation, nor 
— poetic license. First, last, and always, the 
poet's indispensable equipment should be 
founded on SOMETHING TO SAY. 

Sixthly. The Poefs Service. The poet's 
contribution in behalf of humanity, the best, 
most conclusive of answers to the moot mat- 
ter of "How to Write Poetry" as, also, of 
" Why Write It ? " From the dawn of time, 
the infancy of the world the poets have saved 
the world for their fellows, have kept alive 
the world's faith and fervor, its sense and 
sensibilities, its heroism and its hearth-love, 
its sentiment and its sacred fires, its ever- 
changing and ever-endangered evaluation 



Conclusion of the Whole Matter 153 

and appreciation of all sweet high things, of 
nature, of love, of virtue, of honor, of cour- 
age, of truth, of beauty. The poets will do 
so, always, until earth's sun and moon shall 
set, her stars shall fall, her period be over. 
Never more clearly, purely, have they proved 
their right to the heart's kingdom than in 
the reign of terror through which a stricken 
universe has just passed, from which it is 
narrowly, breathlessly emerging. Without the 
poets — but we shrink from the mere idea! 

Seventhly. The Conclusion of the Whole 
Matter — That which we are now saying: 
The epitomizing of the story, the envoy, the 
curtain-drop, the coda, the cordial hand-wave 
to all eager servers in poetry's cause, all de- 
voted soldiers of the poet's banner — at once 
Hail, Farewell, and God Speed You ! 

A kiss of the fingers as we slip back into 
friendly silence, a - "Top o' the mornin' and 
all sweet dreams to you!" salutation. A 
lightsome, lilting "Till we meet again!" 
message and signal to whomever may have 
accompanied us a little way along poetry's 
shimmering road. 



154 How to Write Poetry 

For the inevitable very last word and 
postscript: Here's to all poetry, poetry lov- 
ers, and poets! Here's to the day when 
poetry universally shall be accorded just, su- 
preme, and undisputed place in the high ar- 
tistic hierarchy! Here's to all honest efforts 
to bring such reasonable gladness about! 

God bless you, Fellow-travelers, and the 
spirit of true poetry go with you ! Be happy ! 
The best of poetic Good Luck! 






ROUGE BOUQUET 

[Dedicated to the memory of nineteen members 

of Company E, Infantry, who made the 

supreme sacrifice at Rouge Bouquet, forest of 
Parroy, France, March 7, 1918. Read by the 
chaplain at the funeral, the refrain echoing the music 
of taps from a distant grove; written by Sergeant 
Joyce Kilmer, poet, newspaper man, and author, 
killed in action near the Ourcq, July 30, 19 18. 
Sergeant Kilmer had volunteered his services to the 
major of the foremost battalion because his own bat- 
talion would not be in the lead that day.] 

In a wood they call the Rouge Bouquet 
There is a new-made grave today, 
Built by never a spade nor pick 
. Yet covered with earth ten meters thick. 
There lie many fighting men, 

Dead in their youthful prime, 
Never to laugh nor love again 

Nor taste the Summertime. 
For Death came flying through the air 
And stopped his flight at the dugout stair, 
Touched his prey and left them there, 

Clay to clay. 
He hid their bodies stealthily 
155 



156 How to Write Poetry 

In the soil of the land they fought to free 

And fled away. 
Now, over the grave abrupt and clear 

Three volleys ring; 
And perhaps their brave young spirits hear 

The bugle sing: 
"Go to sleep! 
Go to sleep! 
Slumber well where the shell screamed and 

fell. 
Let your rifles rest on the muddy floor, 
You will not need them any more. 
Danger's past; 
Now at last, 
Go to sleep!" 

There is on earth no worthier grave 
To hold the bodies of the brave 
Than this place of pain and pride 
Where they nobly fought and nobly died. 
Never fear but in the skies 
Saints and angels stand 
Smiling with their holy eyes 

On this new-come band. 
St. Michael's sword darts through the air 



Rouge Bouquet 157 

iAnd touches the aureole on his hair, 
And he sees them stand saluting there 

His stalwart sons; 
And Patrick, Brigid, Columkill 
Rejoice that in veins of warriors still 

The Gael's blood runs. 
And up to Heaven's doorway floats, 

From the wood called Rouge Bouquet, 
A delicate cloud of bugle notes 

That softly say: 
" Farewell! ' 
Farewell ! 

Comrades true, born anew, peace to you! 
Your souls shall be where the heroes are 
And your memory shine like the morning- 
star. 
Brave and dear, 
Shield us here. 
Farewell!" 

— Joyce Kilmer. 



,-F 



\ 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Sept. 2007 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 
(724)779-2111 



